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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION

RECLINING NUDE

signed in Latin l.l. and dated 1930

oil on canvas

NOTE

"The Female Nude" as a genre occupies an important place in the art of Zinaida Serebriakova. Painted in emigration, the offered lot is a commanding work displaying many of the stylistic qualities and mastery of her paintings from the pre-Revolutionary period.

Her female subjects are generally always fleshy and voluptuous. Renaissance painting lies at the heart of her quest to capture the human form as clearly evidenced in the offered lot. The subject's pose and drapery typically recall Classical sculpture and Serebriakova employs a subtle distortion of limbs and perspective to further monumentalise the figure.

Despite this indebtedness to tradition, her nudes are strikingly modern for the directness of the subject's gaze and facial expression. Some of the subjects in her nudes appear ecstatic, in others they stare directly at the viewer such as the offered lot. Recent feminist histories of art discuss the problems presented by images of the female nude and the concomitant objectification of the female body. Painted in the first half of the 20^th century, Serebriakova's nudes offer an unusual perspective to this discourse.

The artist often used her own daughter Katya as her subject and many of these intimate works have remained in the family collection. Two comparable works were sold in these rooms as part of the artist's studio sale in 2001 (Lots 121 & 122, Sotheby's Russian Sale, 20^th November 2001, see fig. 1).

Eroticism is evident in her pre-revolutionary paintings on the theme of the Russian Bathhouse, and even her compositions of women working in the fields painted from 1914-1917 have some sexual overtones (fig 2). However, the nude paintings of the 20s and 30s are among the most erotic of her entire oeuvre, where rather than being an element it becomes almost an end in itself.