Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky

Original canvas. There are some flecks of paintloss along the upper edge and lines of craquelure throughout. There are faint horizontal stretcher marks running across the upper, middle and lower sections. The varnish has slightly discoloured. UV light reveals retouching along the entire upper edge, in places along the right edge and to the lower right corner; UV light also shows a small area of retouching to the cheek of the sitter, the sleeve and the balalaika and in small patches to the background. Held in a gold painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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The Academician Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky was already famous for his paintings of peasant children when he left Russia for Riga in the autumn of 1921. He found a new source of inspiration in the eastern provinces of Latvia, otherwise known as Latgalia, where he continued his series of pictures of peasant children. He and also painted portraits, including this exceptional work, Portrait of Klaus Erkhardt in which a boy in a flowered shirt sits in a garden on a wicker bench playing the balalaika. The boy in question is Klaus Erkhardt, born in Riga in 1922 to Martin and Antonina Erkhardt, a well-educated, middle class German couple native to the Baltics, who were also keen art enthusiasts. They commissioned the renowned artist Bogdanov-Belsky to paint portraits of the family. His portrait of Klaus' elder brother, Gerdt, was included in Bogdanov-Belsky's 1923 solo exhibition in Rome and portraits of both parents were exhibited in his 1925 show. The two-year-old Klaus was painted in a sailor's costume between these exhibitions in 1924.

 

In the late 1920s, the father of the two boys left Riga for Germany. For several years however, his wife Antonina corresponded with Bodganov-Belsky who had become a close friend. The artist had clearly fallen in love with her and would send adoring, though very proper letters from Latgalia and wherever else he exhibited in Europe. In 1932 Antonina Erkhardt and Bogdanov Belsky were married in Riga in the Orthodox cathedral The Nativity of Christ.

 

With no children of his own, Bogdanov-Belsky lavished paternal affection on Klaus and Gerdt. The offered portrait was painted in 1931 in the small village of Asari in Jürmala on the shore of the Baltic sea where the family used to spend their summers. The artist's talents are manifest in the harmonious relationship between the sitter and the setting and the manner in which he conveys the crisp atmosphere of the sunny day with such delicate hues.

 

In the late autumn of 1944, Bogdanov-Belsky revealed to a reporter for a Russian newspaper his intention to leave for Germany with his family – "My wife and sons are returning to their homeland... they are incredibly caring to me". He died in Berlin on 19^th February 1945 and is buried in a graveyard in Tegel, Berlin. The son of poor, provincial parents who extolled the lives of ordinary peasant children in his work, it is perhaps an irony that Bogdanov-Belsky's final resting place should be among Russian aristocrats.

We are grateful to Nina Lapidus, author of the monograph on Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky published by Bely gorod in 2005, for providing this note.