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Dimensions: image size: 22.5 by 19cm., 9 by 7¾in.

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Provenance: A gift from the artist to Professor N.L.Okunev, Prague
Thence by decent

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Exhibited: Prague, Institut Slave de Prague, Exposition de la peinture russe, 1935, No. 122

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Notes: PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, GERMANY
Ivan Bilibin played an exceptional role in establishing book illustrations as an independent art form at the turn of the twentieth century. His work for children's books, journals and magazines is particularly well known. For Bilibin, the page was an expressive entity that was a composite of the text and its presentation. He considered illustration integral to the artistic value of a book. Bilibin was thus one of the first artists in Russia to view illustrating as an art form. The artist's style is inspired by Old Russia, its folk art and fairy tales. The combination of Romantic Nationalism and modern design makes his illustrations unique. His style matured during several expeditions to Northern Russia between 1902 and 1904, during which he gathered and photographed folk art, handicraft items and traditional wooden buildings. In 1929, Ivan Bilibin moved to Paris, and his costume and stage designs, and fairy tale illustrations were the heyday of his career in emigration. Due to their high quality and his apolitical interpretation of a magical Russian world, Ivan Bilibin's illustrations remained popular throughout Russian history.
The offered work is a colour illustration from The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish by Alexander Pushkin, published by Flammarion in Paris as one of a series of fairy tales. In this work Bilibin creates expressiveness by emphasis of line and use of silhouette, derived from Russian icon painting. These illustrated fairy tales were extremely popular in France and Alexander Benois once described them as "the nicest present we can offer our children." (A. Benois, More Books by Bilibin, 1934)