Leonid Pasternak

Acquired directly from the artist by Signe Peters in Berlin, 1922
Thence by descent to the previous owner

Original canvas. There is a shallow dent in the top left of the canvas. There are some pinholes to the corners of the work. The paint surface is slightly dirty with lines of craquelure in places. UV light reveals a spot of retouching to the right hand side of the neck of the vase. Held in a gold painted frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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The interplay of different surfaces and textures is an essential feature of Leonid Pasternak's visual style, both in painting and graphics. The present work is a perfect example of this, with the accumulated, heavy impasto of the rose blooms projecting them powerfully from a background that is a patchwork of smoother opaque layers of paint and thin washes of colour. The zigzagging path of the brush in the roses contrasts with the unified directional strokes of the pitcher, and evokes the differences between the fractured surfaces of the petals and the gleaming ceramic glaze.

Still lifes are relatively unusual for Pasternak, who primarily focused on portraiture and genre painting. Indeed, a number of the extant still lifes by the artist are actually studies of accessories for his portraits. The offered lot was created by Pasternak in 1916, a midpoint in his long artistic career, and a moment when conditions for artists in Russia were deteriorating, amidst the difficult economic and political times of the World War. Two years later, faced with the additional challenges of dealing with a new political climate for art in the nascent Soviet Union, Pasternak resigned his post as professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and in 1921 took the decision to relocate his family from Moscow to Berlin. However, in the inscription on this painting, made shortly after the move to Germany, he still signs Prof. L.Pasternak.

We are grateful to Anna Winestein, of St. Catherine's College, Oxford, and Associate Director of the Ballets Russes 2009 festival, for providing this note.