Yuri Pavlovich Annenkov

Miami Art Museum, Florida
George Campbell, Florida, 1975

Original canvas, which is slightly uneven in the lower section. The paint surface is dirty, especially to the areas with impasto. There are two small areas of damage with associated paint loss to the lower right and left sides of the white bottle. There are small areas of paint shrinkage to the white vase in the upper right quadrant of the composition. There is a small chip of paint loss to the lower right edge of the green bottle and a small area approximately 2cm in length to the lower left region of the table. There is an area of impact craquelure to the upper left quadrant with minor spots of paint loss, further bowed lines of craquelure to the green bottle with associated spots of paint loss. The paint appears to have been rubbed in the lower section of the canvas. There are two patches to the reverse of the canvas, one approximately 8 by 2.5cm in the upper right quadrant and the second approximately 2 by 1.5cm in the upper middle of the canvas. UV light reveals retouching to the aforementioned areas, the larger area of retouching is approximately 5 by 3cm and smaller scattered retouching to places elsewhere. Held in a large wooden black and gold painted frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Annenkov excelled in many fields, from easel painting to graphic portraiture, book illustrations to film and theatre designs. A colleague of Marc Chagall at the University of St. Petersburg, Annenkov travelled to Paris in 1911 and worked with famed French artists Maurice Denis and Felix Vallotton. Returning to Russia he was active alongside the avant-garde but left permanently in 1924 settling in France and becoming part of the School of Paris group.  

The present work dates from this period and shares stylistic similarities with the works reproduced in P. Courthion’s 1930 monograph on the artist. His contemporary, Evgeny Zamyatin, praised Annenkov for his ability to reproduce the true essence of things and the dynamism of the epoch. This museum quality work, once part of the collection of the Miami Art Museum, epitomises this unique style with its rapid brushstrokes, bold colours and skewed perspective.