VASILY DMITRIEVICH POLENOV | BARGE

The Yasher-Sheftell Collection, from the 1940s

Thence by descent

Sotheby's London, Russian Art Evening Sale, 8 June 2009, lot 2

Exhibition catalogue Illyustrirovannyi katalog XXVI vystavki tovarishchestva peredvizhnykh khudozhestvennykh vystavok, Moscow: K.A. Fisher, 1898, p.11, no.97 listed as Barka

G.Romanov (Ed.), The Society of Itinerant Fine Art Exhibitions: 1871-1923. An Encyclopaedia, St Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburg Orkestr, 2003, p.203, no.3-136 listed

St Petersburg, Moscow, Penza et al., XXVI Itinerant Exhibition, 22 February 1898 - 21 February 1899

In 1887 Polenov wrote 'I am dreaming of a house on the bank of the Oka, how we will furnish it, live there, organise a museum, picture gallery and a library...Great plans...maybe they will come true'. Four years later the artist bought an estate on the banks of the great river that runs through the Tula region and where to this day his legacy is preserved at the Polenovo estate museum.

The number N476 on the reverse of the present lot (fig.1) appears to be in Polenov's hand and corresponds to the inventory preserved in the artist's family archive at Polenovo (fig.2). The number 97 inscribed on the stretcher corresponds to the listing in the exhibition catalogue for the 26th Itinerant Exhibition in 1898.