Estimated Price:

   £   

Realised Price:

   £   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

signed in Cyrillic and dated 1913 (lower left); also signed Vinogradoff Serge (lower right)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Possibly Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 1913-1938
Probably Amb. Joseph Davies, 1938-1958
His estate sale, Washington, DC, circa 1965
Private Collection, Washington, D.C., 1965 to present
EXHIBITED

Probably, Picture Show of the Union of Russian Painters, St. Petersburg, 1914
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Probably, St. Petersburg Courrier, 1914, no. 6
N. Stankevich, S. A. Vinogradov, Izd. "Isskustvo", Leningrad otdel., 1971, listed in chronological inventory of paintings under 1913, p.128, as Moskva-Kreml
CATALOGUE NOTE

This iconic view of the Kremlin is a rediscovered masterpiece by one of Russia's foremost Impressionist painters. Painted by Sergei Vinogradov, it ranks among the most important works by him to be offered at auction. This painting was brought to the United States by Joseph Davies, when he returned from his post as U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1939. A confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt, Ambassador Davies was then married to Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress of the great Post cereal fortune, whose own collection currently resides at the Hillwood Museum in Washington, DC. While there is no record of it there, the painting was prominently displayed in Ambassador Davies' dacha/office in Saranac Lake, New York, circa 1950 (see fig. 1).

In Alexander Benois' seminal book, The Russian School of Painting (Knopf, NYC, 1916), this noted artist and critic cites Sergei Vinogradov as one of the "most gifted and pleasing" of Isaac Levitan's followers, (p. 163). Vinogradov studied under Vladimir Makovsky, Illarion Pryanishnikov and Vassili Polenov at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture between 1880-1889, and at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1889. During the 1890s, Vinogradov and his fellow Russian Impressionist painters traveled extensively through the Russian countryside portraying poetic renditions of Russian peasant life. Usually painting en plein air, these artists were often able to capture the fleeting effects of light in their compositions. In the 1900s Vinogradov turned his attention to painting evocative scenes of grand estates, but his interest in the effects of light on the landscape continued throughout his career.

The present work is dated 1913, at which time Vinogradov was Chairman of the Russian Union of Artists (until 1924). Many of the Russian painters who painted in an Impressionistic style, such as Korovin, Zukovsky, Pasternak, as well as many other giants of Russian landscape painting such as Polenov, Levitan and Kuindhzi often turned to the picturesque towns, quaint villages, birch groves and provincial vistas for inspiration rather than to urban centers as subjects. Cityscapes were much less pervasive, making Vinogradov's view of the Kremlin, the great cultural symbol of Russia, especially rare. Here Vinogradov offers a magical view of the Kremlin complex on a sunny winter day, with its great towered walls, palaces, and churches. Note the famous multicolored domes of St. Basil's Cathedral in the upper right corner of the canvas. Vinogradov's unconventional perspective, where flattened broad horizontal fields of color appear like rungs of a ladder, encourages viewers to observe the ripples of sunshine along the Moscow River before climbing to the tops of the Kremlin's luminescent spires.