Philip Andreevich Maliavin

S.A. Beilitz, Paris
Private Collection (acquired directly from the above in 1955)
Thence by descent

Prague, Works by F.A. Maliavin, 1933, no. 12 (as The Artist's Sister and dated 1894)

Works by F.A. Maliavin (exhibition catalogue), Prague, 1933, p. 3, illustrated (as The Artist's Sister and dated 1894)
O.A. Zhivova, Filip Maliavin, Moscow, 1967, pp. 247, 261 (the present lot is not illustrated in this publication)
State Tretyakov Gallery, Catalogue of the Collection: Painting of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, vol. 5, Moscow, 2005, p. 230

This painting is in very fresh condition. The canvas is unlined and the picture is still stretched on what appears to be the original stretcher. The paint layer is more or less clean and is varnished. The scraped areas of the pigment so clearly visible, particularly in the upper left, are all original; the artist himself used a palette knife which created this slightly grainy texture. The same can be said for some of these scraped areas in the center of the right background. The figure herself is in beautiful condition. The paint layer is very healthy. There is very slight thinness in the floral dress at the bottom of the picture, which is also intentional. There are what appear to be some additional areas of discolored glazes in the center of the right background which may or may not be original. There are also a few similar retouches in the upper left. Overall however, the paint layer is very healthy and if the frame were attended to, the picture should be hung as is. The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Philip Maliavin is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating figures of turn-of-the-century Russian art history. Born a peasant, he grew up in the village of Kazanka in the Samara province. Life in Kazanka was deeply rooted in tradition: peasants wore patterned and richly colorful clothing, and they celebrated the changing seasons with church festivals and their unique style of music and dance. Maliavin grew obsessed with drawing at an early age, and he proved himself to be profoundly talented despite his lack of formal artistic education. At the age of 16, his fellow villagers took up a collection to send him to the Russian monastery of Saint Pantileimon on Mount Athos, where he trained in the famous icon painting workshops there. Within six years he was discovered by fellow artist Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky, and then by Vladimir Beklemishev, who invited him to enroll at the St. Petersburg Academy and offered to sponsor his trip to get there.

Maliavin was seen as a bit of an outsider at the Academy. This is acutely evidenced in the words of Anna Ostroumova Lebedeva, the St. Petersburg sophisticate and painter who joined the Academy in the same year. She wrote, "A curious figure caught my attention; a young man in strange clothing resembling a monk's cassock, wearing a skull cap low on his head, with shoulder length hair, a flat pock marked face with high cheek bones...His shyness, his lost look and his obvious loneliness caught the attention of the girls..."

In 1894, the very same year that Maliavin executed the present lot, the system of instruction at the Academy was reformed, and students were assigned to the studios of specific masters. Maliavin was assigned to study under Ilya Repin, "Realist" painter and leading member of the Itinerants. Repin undoubtedly exerted great influence over Maliavin's development from that point forward, though the student's style remained uniquely impulsive. Preferring to paint portraits of peasants, Maliavin retained a sense of wonderment for the artistic process, and he was just as keen to explore the psychology of his subjects as he was to reinterpret the elaborate patterns of their clothing. Meanwhile, he was increasingly aware of the recent accomplishments of artists in Western Europe, including Diego Velázquez and Édouard Manet, whose well-known portraits seem particularly linked to Maliavin's paintings from this period. Of particular interest is Maliavin's flair for the dramatic, as exemplified by the effect of chiaroscuro in Peasant, Covering her Mouth with a Shawl. The peasant girl appears to be caught hiding behind her clothing and in the shadows, and she looks back upon the viewer with a mysterious, even haunting gaze.

In the monograph Filip Malyavin by O.A. Zhivova (1967), the author describes Maliavin's peasant portraiture created under Ilya Repin and discusses the present lot as follows:

In the works that Maliavin executed at this time, Peasant, Covering her Mouth with a Shawl (1894), The Country Girl with Stockings and Behind the Book (both 1895), everyone saw the powerful declaration of the artist's absolutely mature expression and his immense natural talent. With freshness, innovative style, enormous force of expression, and significant, inherent relevance, he distinguishes each of his images of young peasants, the models for which were the artist's relatives and friends from his homeland. The artistic decisions of these works—the composition, color, and background—are always varied, but the high quality, as well as the psychological directness of these portraits, unifies them all. Their characteristic features are such that each canvas is just as much a portrait of a contemporary, individual face known to the artist as it is a prototypical image of a Russian peasant woman.

With a restrained palette, chromatic balance is very delicately and loyally handled in the picture Peasant, Covering her Mouth with a Shawl. Having draped her shoulders with her wide fur-trimmed coat with long sleeves, and having covered with her mouth, the young woman stands against a wall. Falling from the right, the light illuminates her face, emphasizes the bright sleeve of her jacket and casts a shadow against the wall. Her Russian face is beautifully wide, swarthy, firmly molded, with a gently inquisitive glance from her moist, very lively eyes, matching the beautiful, deep and velvety tone of the short fur-lined coat, and the dimly lit dark blue of the skirt with large red flowers. Her curly hair hangs carelessly, folds of her clothing fall softly, and the line of the figure's silhouette is drawn smoothly, creating altogether, with each element integral, an extremely powerful image.

The artist chooses a typical and traditional pose for this portrait, en face, on a neutral background, but he represents her posed not over a long period of time, but rather he fixes upon a moment that soon shall pass. It seems that the peasant girl has stopped for a short while, peacefully and expectantly looking forward. This transitory encounter is emphasized even more by its vivacity and sincerity. The portrait is pure and restrained in color, but the bold juxtaposition of the very light background, brightly illuminated from the right, and the black clothing thrown around her shoulders, again underscores Maliavin's talent as a colorist (O.A. Zhivova, Filip Maliavin, Moscow, 1967, p. 35).

The present lot was exhibited in Prague in 1933 (during the artist's lifetime) as a portrait of the artist's sister, but relatives from his village believed it to be the image of a neighbor—Nastasia Zakharovna Morgacheva. An alternate version hangs in the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.