Lot 35
  • 35

Sergei Vasilievich Gerasimov

Estimate
50,000 - 70,000 GBP
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Description

  • Sergei Vasilievich Gerasimov
  • Evening in Mozhaisk
  • signed and titled in Cyrillic and bearing exhibition and inventory labels on the reverse
  • oil on board
  • 50 by 70.5cm, 19 1/2 by 27 1/2 in.
  • Executed in 1959

Provenance

Acquired directly from the family of the artist in 1965

Exhibited

Moscow, Union of Artists Exhibition Halls & Les Oreades Gallery, Svobodnogo vybora dukh, 1993
Moscow, Central House of Artists, 60 let Pobedy, 2005
Moscow, Central House of Artists, Exhibition of Soviet Art from the Collection of the Union of Artists, 2005
Moscow, Central House of Artists, Otechestvo, 2008
Moscow, Central House of Artists, 65 let Pobedy, 2010

Literature

S.V.Gerasimov: Albom reproduktsii, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1972, no.142 illustrated
I.Rostovtseva, Sergei Gerasimov, Leningrad: Aurora, 1975, no.86 illustrated
K.Kravchenko, Sergei Vasilievich Gerasimov, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1985, p.211, no.89 illustrated
N.Egorova, Sergei Gerasimov, Moscow: Bely gorod, 2007, p.45 illustrated

Condition

The board is sound. There is a layer of surface dirt. There are pin holes to all four corners, wear to the top right corner and abrasions to all edges, particularly the lower edge. There are a few surface scratches, including to the sky. Inspection under UV light does not reveal any obvious signs of restoration. Held in a gold painted frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Catalogue Note

This evening view of Mozhaisk is a superb example of Sergei Gerasimov’s interpretation of the particular strand of Russian Impressionism introduced and developed by Konstantin Korovin, his teacher at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1907 to 1912. The violet-based palette and alternation of feather-like and dense brushwork is reminiscent in particular of the latter’s Okhotino landscapes.

Throughout his life Gerasimov returned often to Mozhaisk, the town near Moscow where he grew up. ‘Sergei Vasilievich was a particularly national artist, particularly Russian’, wrote his contemporary, the artist Pavel Korin. ‘He grew up amongst the fields and forests of the ancient town of Mozhaisk, not far from the proud and bright fields of Borodino’. In the 1950s and early 1960s he painted a famous series of Mozhaisk landscapes, including a smaller oil, Towards Autumn (1953, Private Collection) taken from the same viewpoint as the present work.