Dmitri Semenovich Stelletsky

Arthur F. Hamann, Riga and Germany

The paper has been laid down on board. There are small pinholes to the right hand corners of the sheet and in places along the edges. The edges of the paper have been cut unevenly and there is some wear in places along as some light surface scratches. The paper has yellowed slightly. Held in a black painted wooden frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Stelletsky was fascinated by pre-Petrine art and often visited Russia's ancient towns and monasteries prior to his emigration to Paris in 1914. As he explained in his memoirs, 'I understood that only by studying the artistic heritage of our ancestors, and even by imitating it slavishly, can one - and indeed must one - resurrect the beauty of my own native Russia... I know that the draw it holds for me is something I was born with.'

This sense of reviving a lost idiom dictated so much of Stelletsky's work. 'His art is very unexpected and original, full of a distinctly modern sense of the fantastic and a completely individual understanding of line, form, and palette. Stelletsky does not imitate: he resurrects". (S.Makovsky cited in Khudozhniki russkoi emigratsii, St Petersburg: Chernysheva, 1994).

The Feast of Orthodoxy takes place on the first Sunday of Lent. It commemorates the restoration of the veneration of icons after the Iconoclast controversy, which is considered to be the triumph of the Church over the last of the great heresies. Stelletsky clearly drew much from icon-painting techniques, but the present work is a rare instance of icons incorporated into the composition itself. At the forefront is the icon of the Hodigitria Mother of God, one of the holiest objects of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Processions were one of Stelletsky's favourite subjects and recall the Renaissance paintings which he saw on his 1907 trip to Italy with Boris Kustodiev. In the rich train of two-dimensional figures against stacked cupolas in the present lot or The Marriage Procession (1917), there are echoes of the majestic Renaissance processions of Benozzo Gozzoli, transposed into an ancient Russian setting.

Hamann may have acquired the present work at one of Stelletsky's European exhibitions in the 1920s in Venice, Paris or Brussels.