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Provenance: Private Collection, Europe, 1960s
Acquired from the above by the present owner

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Notes: The short strokes of pure pigment in Delphiniums create the intense sense of optical vibration for which Grabar was famous. The juxtaposition of complementary yellows and purples in the foreground is a characteristic feature of some of his most famous canvases, in particular his early snowscapes, and reflects his brilliant assimilation of Seurat and Signac's divisionist techniques.

But as the well-known critic Alexei Fedorov-Davydov pointed out, Russian pointillism wasn't simply an innovative technique; it was an entirely new way of looking at landscape. His comments on Grabar's February Day (1904, The State Tretyakov Gallery) could equally describe the present work: 'The first thing that strikes one looking at the picture is his substitution of the distant plane for a subject that is largely in the foreground.... Instead of the previous domination of the general over the particular - of space and air over details and 'objects', here the opposite is true. The particular now govern over the universal.' (A.Fedorov-Davydov, 'On the new character of post-impressionist landscape',18υth - early 20υth century Russian Landscape, 1986, p.241).

This sophisticated inversion of planes sets the present work apart from Grabar's treatment of this subject in 1908 (fig.1) and the conservative composition of In the Garden, a Bed of Delphiniums (1947, Kursk State Picture Gallery). With its cascading spectrum of hues, Delphiniums reflects Grabar's deep appreciation of nature's richness on a magnificent scale.