Lot 13 : KOROVIN, KONSTANTIN Years: 1861-1939 Lady with a
Auction Location: United Kingdom - 2008
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Title:
KOROVIN, KONSTANTIN Years: 1861-1939 Lady with a
Description:
KOROVIN, KONSTANTIN Years: 1861-1939 Lady with a Guitarsigned and dated 1912 Oil on canvas, 86 by 66 cm.
Provenance: Private collection of A.Y. Abramyan, Russia.
Private collection, USA.
Authenticity certificate from the State Tretyakov Gallery, experts A. Gusarova and L. Gladkova.
Exhibited: The Fine Art Exhibition of the Russia Union of Artists, Fadeev Central House of Literature, March-April 1972, label on the stretcher.
Literature: Illustrated on a postcard published by Izobrazitelnoe Iskysstvo, Moscow, 1974.
Lady with a Guitar is a magnificent example of Korovin's work from the 1910s when the master reached the peak of his career.It was during this period that his canvases became increasinglycolourful, and a free, sweeping style emerged. This is clearly visiblein the portraits of Nadezhda Komarovskaya, a close friendof Korovin, whom he frequently portrayed from the end of thefirst decade of the twentieth century to the early part of thesecond decade.
Korovin painted his model by improvising directly from nature,and therefore the portrait has none of the deliberate, painstakingstyle and faithfully recreated details which were characteristicof his youth. He strived to depict the young lady in arelaxed pose, and to convey a lively, domestic scene. His speedilyproduced works are focused on conveying first impressions.A relationship between the portrait image and its environment isconstructed with the aid of pulsating light and miscellaneousreflections. The way in which he makes use of his own "trademark"colourist discovery of 1886 is also extremely striking: the"burning" of the colour red next to green, gradually becomingtransformed into the traditional colour spectrum of the masterand his diverse combinations of dark green and red-ochre tones.The very structure of the composition, in which a model sits inthe corner against the background of a window, becomes acharacteristic feature of Korovin's works of this period, whichfrequently combine the genres of portraiture, landscape paintingand still life. A number of compositions from this series are wellknown. They include one of the Lady with Guitar portraits, whichwas sold at the MacDougall's Russian Art Sale in May 2006.
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