Dmitri Semenovich Stelletsky, 1875 - 1947

Professor N.L. Okunev, Prague
Thence by decent

Prague, Institut Slave de Prague, Exposition de la peinture russe, 1935

The sheets are discoloured with handling marks and some spots of staining to the edges. There is smudging in places. Some sheets are worn at the edges and creased, one with a repaired tear 6cm. long
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Several Russian artists turned to folkloric themes as a source of inspiration in the early 20^th century, "unsullied" as they were by subsequent literary development, but none more so than Dmitry Stelletsky. A convinced Slavophile who believed that Peter I's drastic reforms has damaged the organic development of Russian culture, he even mixed his paints according to medieval recipes. He studied architecture and sculpture at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts (1896-1903) and later turned to painting, drawing on his extensive knowledge of medieval frescoes and icons such as those at Novgorod which he travelled to see with Boris Kustodiev. Prototypes for the present work were provided by miniatures from the Collection of Illuminations, a sixteenth-century illustrated history of Russia.

The 12^th century verse epic, The Lay of Igor's Campaign, is an extraordinary work, not only because of its lyricism and pantheistic overtones, but also its subject: far from celebrating a military triumph, the bard recounts the failed campaign of a Chernihov prince in 1185 against the Polovtsi and his escape from captivity. He pleads for an end to internecine warring - a prescient lament given the full-scale Mongol invasion of 1223 - and harks back to a golden age of political harmony. Its colourful and cosmic imagery inspired several artists including Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), who adapted it into an opera, Prince Igor, and Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926).

Stelletsky captures brilliantly the poem's drama and brutality, skilfully weaving stylised landscapes into a formal pattern and recovering the flattened surfaces of medieval art. His designs extend beyond the bounds of mere illustrations and concentrate on the art of the 'elegant line', as Bakst put it; the critic Makovsky wrote of his work: 'here shines a light of the truth of the age to come'.