IVAN PAVLOVICH POKHITONOV | Summer at Jupille, Study of Trees

Collection of Eugénie Wulfert and Boris Wulfert Pokhitonov, Belgium

Private collection, Belgium

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Liège, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Parc de la Boverie, Société Royale des Beaux-Arts. Salon Triennal de 1924, 10 May - 29 June 1924, no.30, Etude d’arbres

A riot of colour, this bright and freely-painted study shows Pokhitonov at his furthest remove from the Barbizon School and closer to some of his Impressionist contemporaries such as Monet and Renoir with whom he had exhibited in 1882 at the gallery of his Paris dealer, Georges Petit. To depict the sun at its highest point is a challenge, but as Witmeur goes on to say in his appreciation of Pokhitonov’s work, his paintings are about sensation as well as detail, in which case this is as much a study of exuberant joy as it is of pine trees: ‘A small piece becomes for him an inexhaustible source of detail rich in sensations just as the human heart is rich in the nuances of feeling' ('Un peintre russe, chantre de la Wallonie', La Vie Wallonne, March 1924).

The present lot will be included in the third volume of the catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Olivier Bertrand.