Aristarkh Vasilievich Lentulov

Sotheby's London, Twentieth Century Russian and East European Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture 1900-1930, 4 July 1974, lot 2
Acquired at the above sale by Christoph Czwiklitzer 
Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne
Acquired from the above by the father of the present owners in 1980

Moscow, Vsekokhudozhnik, Vystavka kartin A.V.Lentulova organizovannaya k 25-letiyu khudozhestvennoi deyatel'nosti 1908-1933, 1933, no.31
Moscow, Aristarkh Lentulov, 1968

Exhibition catalogue Vystavka kartin A.V.Lentulova organizovannaya k 25-letiyu khudozhestvennoi deyatel'nosti 1908-1933, Moscow, 1933, p.26, no.31 listed under works from 1912
Exhibition catalogue, Aristarkh Lentulov, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1968, listed under works from 1912
M.Lentulova, Khudozhnik Aristarkh Lentulov, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1969, p.131 listed under works from 1912

The canvas has been strip-lined. The surface is covered in a layer of dirt. There is craquelure in places, particularly noticeable in the lower right of the picture. There are frame abrasions along all edges. Inspection under UV-light reveals some scattered retouching, including a horizontal line approximately 10cm in length in the lower left corner, as well as a vertical line approximately 18cm in length in the upper right corner. Held in a black and gold painted wooden frame with canvas slip. Unexamined out of frame.
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Lentulov spent the summer of 1912 in the Crimean village of Koktebel on the shores of the Black Sea, where he stayed with his friend, the writer Alexei Tolstoy. Lentulov was very fond of the South, and the Crimea proved a source of inspiration throughout his career. As his daughter Marianna later recalled, Lentulov spent his days decorating the interior of a local café together with Tolstoy and poet Maximilian Voloshin. It must have been a carefree time for the artist, away from Moscow and his responsibilities as secretary to the Jack of Diamonds society, which had been founded a year earlier.

Most likely painted during this stay in Koktebel, Children with Parasols shows a group of children sitting on the beach, sheltering from the sun with hats and umbrellas. The painting embodies many of the key characteristics of the Jack of Diamonds group, one of the earliest Russian avant-garde movements, then at its prime.

The simplified forms of the childrens’ bodies and faces show the influence of primitive artists, an important national source of inspiration for the Jack of Diamonds movement. The bold brushwork and the strong colours also point to the influence of French Post-Impressionism, in particular the Fauves.

The painting is closely related to two other beach scenes which Lentulov painted a couple of years earlier, and which he exhibited at the Jack of Diamonds exhibitions. In his memoirs, Lentulov fondly remembers Women with Parasols, ‘with its exact and clear direction of colour and light manner of painting’, as ‘one of the best works at the exhibition’ (fig.1). The painting was acquired by the State Tretyakov Gallery as early as 1918. The second work (fig.4), ‘a study depicting women in white hats sitting on the seashore was even brighter and more “expressionist”’ (A.Lentulov, ‘Memoirs’, The Knave of Diamonds in the Russian Avant-Garde, St Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2004, p.42).