Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky

The family of the artist

Leningrad, The State Russian Museum, Shestaya vystavka proizvedenii P.P. Konchalovskogo, March - June 1929

Konchalovsky. Khudozhestvennoe nasledie, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964, pl.61; p.115 listed as zhi 530
V.S. Turchin, Petr Konchalovsky, Moscow: Belyi gorod, 2008, illustrated p.178

The canvas has been strip-lined. There are frame abrasions along the edges with some associated paint loss. There are scattered areas of craquelure throughout, in particular to the snow and the middle left. There is a fleck of paint loss amidst the craquelure in the middle left approximately 5cm from the left edge. There are some surface scratches to the sky in the upper right quadrant and scratches near the left edge. Inspection under UV light reveals some scattered retouching, in particular to the sky, along the top edge, and to the lower centre. Held in a gold-painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Konchalovsky first visited Georgia in 1927, though he was well acquainted with the Caucasus since boyhood from the illustrated works of Lermontov and Pushkin published by his father. He was deeply impressed by the mountains and was mesmerised in particular by Mount Kazbek in northern Georgia. ‘After seeing Kazbek’ wrote Konchalovsky, ‘I felt myself in an ancient land, a completely novel and fascinating world. Pushkin with his poetic images and definitions helped me unravel the Caucasian mystery’ (quoted in V.Nikolsky, Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky, Moscow 1936, p.105).

Konchalovsky’s trip resulted in a key series of paintings depicting Mount Kazbek executed at different times of the day. The offered lot is the last of the paintings in this series. In her diary, Konchalovsky’s wife records how he painted the cycle almost entirely en plein air from a single location. His interest in capturing fleeting light effects in this cycle is unmistakably Impressionist, whilst the compositional and material interest in Mount Kazbek recalls Cézanne’s treatment of Mont Sainte-Victoire.