Boris Izrailevich Anisfeld

The Family of the Artist
New York, Shepherd Gallery
Sotheby's New York, Russian Art, 17 April 2007, lot 369

St. Petersburg, Mir Iskusstva, 1916
Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum, The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, 1918, no. 63, travelling exhibition
New York, Reinhardt Galleries, The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, 1924, no. 10
Boston, Boston Art Club and Twentieth-Century Club, 1924, no. 31
Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, 1928, no. 6
New York, Shepherd Gallery, Boris Anisfeld in St. Petersburg 1901 - 1917, autumn 1984, no. 47
Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, "Fantast-Mystic": Twelve Russian Paintings from the Collection of Joey and Toby Tanenbaum, 1989, no. 11, travelling exhibition

C.Brinton, The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, Brooklyn, 1918, no. 63, illustrated
L.Weinberg, "The Art of Boris Anisfeld," The International Studio, November 1918.
H.Tyrrell, "The Exotic Art of Boris Anisfeld," The Christian Science Monitor, undated c. 1918
A.J. Philpott, "New Thrill from Anisfeld Pictures," The Boston Globe, December 10, 1918
F.de Cisneros, "La Opulencia Bizantina: Boris Anisfeld," Social (Havana), 1918, p. 19, illustrated
"Boris Anisfeld Pantings Big Art Feature," Buffalo News, 18 January 1919
M.Kinkead, "Boris Anisfeld: Colorist," Asia, 19 February, 1919, pp. 171-172, illustrated
M. Roberts, "The Great Russia Put on Canvas, Illustrated by the Paintings of Boris Anisfeld," Touchstone, February 1919, p. 329
Jessie C. Glasier, "Many Anisfeld Canvases Have Exquisite Charm as Well as Crash of Color," Cleveland Plain Dealer, 23 February 1919
M. Williams, "Painted His Pictures as Russ Guns Roared- Boris Anisfeld's "Exhibition in Chicago Full of Slav Atmosphere," Chicago News, 5 April 1919
Marcus, "Anisfeld's Paintings Give Thrills to Visitors at Institute," Chicago Herald, 10 April 1919
"Boris Anisfeld's Pictures," St. Louis Mirror, 24 July 1919
M.B. Mayhew, "Anisfeld Works Attract Critics," Milwaukee Sentinel, September 1919
P.B. "Anisfeld Pictures Opulent in Color," Art News, 29 March 1924
Marguerite B. Williams, "About a Painter without Theories," Chicago Daily News, 8 January 1930
Shepherd Gallery, Boris Anisfeld in St. Petersburg 1901-1917, New York, 1984, no. 47, plate 47, illustrated
R.J. Mesley, "Fantast-Mystic": Twelve Russian Paintings from the Collection of Joey and Toby Tanenbaum, Toronto, 1989, p.60-63, illustrated

There is a light layer of surface dirt. There are some patches of fine craquelure in places e.g. to the yellow peacock's tail. There is some light abrasion to the middle of the right hand inner frame edge. UV light reveals a few small patches of retouching scattered in places, and some slightly larger areas of repainting to the left and right thigh of the figure standing on the left, and to the face and neck of the third figure from the right. Held in a black painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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In 1917, Anisfeld packed up The Garden of Hesperides, together with as many other canvases and sketches as possible, and sent them by train from St Petersburg to Vladivostok. When they eventually arrived in the far east of Russia where Anisfeld had anxiously been waiting for months with his wife and daughter, the family emigrated to United States via Japan, Vancouver and Montreal. Anisfeld's large retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum the following year and the ensuing travelling exhibition revealed The Garden of Hesperides to a very different public to that which first saw it in the 1916 Mir Iskusstva exhibition. 

According to a hand-written listing of prices paid for works from the 1918 travelling exhibition, the most expensive was 'Hesperides' at $12,000. Anisfeld himself was evidently pleased with the work as he exhibited it together with a sketch for it in tempera and pastel on board, a darker, less defined work. At 98 by 70 inches, the offered lot would have been a centrepiece of the exhibition, but its success was not a question of scale: the only other painting of comparable dimensions, The Golden Tribute (1908) fetched only $1,200. Clearly, discerning collectors already appreciated which was Anisfeld's most successful period, since the next most sought-after pieces were Bacchanale - Sketch, Hispania and Danae in Green, which each sold for $10,000 (fig.1). 

As the list of reviews above bears out, 'in 1917-18, the year his travelling retrospective toured the United States, 'he may well have been one of the world's most written-about living artists' (R.Mesley, introduction to Fantast-Mystic, 1989). The reaction of contemporary critics was famously mixed - impressed, shocked, delighted, bewildered  - but the impact of his original idiom was incontestable. As one reviewer commented, 'Mr Boris Anisfeld is a Russian and the Russians are extremists. His work is strange, exotic, barbaric, weird, incoherent, oriental, fantastic'.  

The ostensible subject of The Garden of Hesperides is the triad of nymphs known as the Hesperides or Daughters of the Evening, guardians of the golden apples which Gaea caused to grow as a marriage gift for Hera. They in turn were watched over by the serpent Ladon, the real sentinel of the garden. The obvious parallels between the Garden of Hesperides and Eden made it a prime subject for Anisfeld who revelled in the blend of pagan and Christian narratives and myths that thread their ways through cultural consciousness over the ages, combining elements from the Old Testament, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and pantheism. In the present work, Anisfeld embellishes the myth: eleven Hesperides, not three; a grove dripping with immortal apples rather than a single tree. The dripping apples, lush vegetation and seductive nudes recall the sketches for the murals he was commissioned to paint in 1917 at the Villa Wourgaft by a St Petersburg banker (figs. 2 and 3). As with his Garden of Eden (1910-1917) the present work glows with a golden light that hints at a Golden Age before the fall of man, or in this case, the irruption of Hercules whose 12^th labour it was to steal the apples.

The saturation of colour is overwhelming. Whereas in Anisfeld's Eden red-green is predominant, with blue-gold as a second pair of complementaries, here the relationship is reversed. Anisfeld must surely have seen the huge Gauguin exhibition which was one of the principal attractions in  the Salon d'Automne of 1906, but external influences on Anisfeld are as various and personalised as his blend of spirituality: aside from Gauguin, there are traces of Rousseau's dense jungles, Redon's cascading foliage and brilliant flowers (fig.4). The blend of influences was not lost on contemporary critics: 'Anisfeld evidences in his work a great interest in the experiments of the last decade or two... the delicate gray warmness of Whistler, the plastic painting of Cezanne, the abstract beauty of Picasso, the fertile invention and variety of colour mood in Oriental art, have all left their mark' L.Weinberg, The Art of Boris Anisfeld, The International Studio, November 1918.

The Garden of Hesperides was one of 12 major works bought by the Tananbaums from the 1984 exhibition at the Shepherd Gallery in New York. It has not returned to Russia since the eve of Revolution.