Important Works of Russian Art by Makovsky, Repin, Kuprin and more

Konstantin Makovsky, Blind Man's Bluff
Estimate £2,000,000–3,000,000

Blind Man’s Bluff belongs to a series of works depicting opulent scenes of pre-Petrine Russia, most of which are now in museums collections. Exhibited and widely published during the artist’s lifetime, the work is a testament to Makovsky’s passion for Boyar life in old Russia.

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Alexander Kuprin, Autumn Bouquet Against Blue Background (Krylatskoe)
Estimate £100,000–150,000

The present still-life is a rare example of Kuprin’s work from the first-half of the 1920s to appear on the open market. It has impeccable provenance, having been given by the widow of the artist to the family of the present owners.

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Yuri Pimenov, Street Scene in Novorossiysk
Estimate £50,000–70,000

Painted in 1929 during a trip to southern Russia, the present work depicts the bustle of the city’s port. Novorossiysk was, and still remains, the most strategically important southern port on Russian territory.

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Niko Pirosmani, Georgian Woman Wearing a Lechaki
Estimate £500,000–700,000

The subject of a major exhibition currently taking place at Vienna’s Albertina, the self-taught Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani remains as enigmatic today as he was during his lifetime. His work influenced the Russian futurists who ‘discovered’ him just as they were looking for non-Western inspiration for their work. The present lot was once in the collection Austrian author Stefan Zweig, who had acquired it during a trip to Moscow in 1928.

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Ilya Repin, Portrait of Leo Tolstoy
Estimate £400,000–600,000

One of several portraits of the great author created over the course of Repin and Tolstoy’s 30-year friendship, the present work has not been seen in public since it was shown at the Repin exhibition in New York in 1921. Like many other works painted by Repin during this period, the artist used a linoleum support as canvas was hard to source in war-time Russia.

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Robert Falk, Greek Woman (Portrait of Inna Costakis)
Estimate £200,000–300,000

Robert Falk’s portrait of Inna Costakis, the daughter of legendary collector of the Russian avant-garde George Costakis, was taken out of the Soviet Union when the Costakis family immigrated to Greece in the late 1970s. A founding member of the pre-revolutionary Jack of Diamonds group, Falk was an important source of information on Russian and Western modernist art for the unofficial artists of the post-war Soviet Union as well as collectors such as Costakis.

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Valentin Serov, View of Amsterdam
Estimate £80,000–120,000

The present lot is an early work of Valentin Serov, painted by the artist during a trip to Europe aged just twenty. A student of Repin, Serov would go on to become the most prominent Russian portrait painter of his generation, with many notable names of the period, including members of the Imperial family, sitting for him.

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Otto Gottlieb Schwarz, Manoeuvres near Pavlovskoe, 3 August 1846
Estimate £30,000–50,000

Formerly in the collection of Emperor Nicholas I, the present lot is the work of German painter Otto Gottlieb Schwarz, whose career as painter to the Russian Imperial Court spanned nearly twenty years and the reigns of two Tsars. The work depicts troops practising manoeuvres near Krasnoe Selo, just outside St Petersburg.

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Nikolai Fechin, Portrait of a Young Girl
Estimate £250,000–350,000

Dating from Fechin’s rare Russian period, the artist brought the work with him when he left Russia for America in 1923. It remained with him until his death in 1955.

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Konstantin Makovsky, Portrait of the Artist's Daughters Olga and Marina with Teddy Bear
Estimate £150,000–200,000

Makovsky frequently featured his daughters, Olga and Marina, in his work. The present lot has remained with the artist’s descendants until today.

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