CHANA ORLOFF (RUSSIAN 1888-1968), "Bust of Ludmilla Pitoëff," cast after a model created in 1924, bronze, height: 53 cm (20 7/8 in.), length: 33 cm (13 in.), width: 20 cm (7 7/8 in.) [excluding base], signed 'Ch. Orloff' on back, numbered '1/8,' with a Susse Fondeur Paris foundry mark. Bust mounted on a marble base. The subject of the bust, Ludmilla Pitoëff, was a fascinating figure of Parisian society. Born Ludmilla Smanov in Tbilisi on December 25, 1895, Ludmilla married fellow actor Georges Pitoëff, a well known actor and producer of the French theatre, in Paris in 1915. Georges came from an illustrious and wealthy family of Armenian industrialists from Tbilisi who owned and operated "Pitoëff & Co.," a holding company specializing in oil exploration and refinement, as well as fish and caviar manufacturing. The original Pitoëff family was highly involved with the arts and quite influential, Georges' father being the director of the Tiflis Opera theatre and a major contributor to the rise of Feodor Chaliapin, who began his career in Tbilisi. In France, Georges and Ludmilla Pitoëff staged numerous theatrical productions of Shaw, Ibsen, and especially of Russian playwrights such as Chekhov, whose plays they effectively made a staple of French theatrical repertoire. Georges would produce and direct the productions, and Ludmilla would star in them. She was noted for her powerful stage presence. The writer Jean Nepveu-Degas, nephew of artist Edgar Degas, described Ludmilla in the following way after seeing her in a production of Chekhov's "Three Sisters," 'Le mince visage pâle, le regard dévorant, la frêle silhouette claire et la voix pathétique (trans: "The thin pale face, the ravenous gaze, the frail distinct silhouette and the voice full of pathos").