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Dimensions: 49 by 61.5cm., 19 1/4 by 24 1/4 in.

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Provenance: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE FRENCH COLLECTION

The Collection of E. Rubin
Private Collection, Paris

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Exhibited: The Golden Fleece, Moscow, 1909, cat.68
Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 'Goncharova and Larionov', 1963, cat.76

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Notes: Mikhail Larionov and his life long partner and collaborator Natalia Goncharova were two immensely influential figures in Moscow in the first decades of the 20^th century. Both were instrumental to the development of the avant-garde movement in Russia. The offered lot, 'Through the Nets, the Bathers' from 1904 is a key early work by Larionov. It shows a distinct departure from his first essays in modernism, which are influenced by French impressionist art and the work of the Nabis painters, in particular Vuillard and Bonnard. Instead it points towards the revolutionary, neo-primitivist works, so called for their naïve style, that he and his partner began to create in 1907.

Although painted as early as 1904, Larionov chose to exhibit it five years later at one of the two Zolotoye Runo [Golden Fleece] exhibitions staged in Moscow in 1909. The Golden Fleece exhibition took its name from a seminal Russian art magazine founded in 1906 by the wealthy Russian merchant Nikolai Riabushinsky. The magazine was a forum for the dissemination and discussion of new art trends, in particular those from France. More significantly it enabled the Russians to compare their own emerging avant-garde alongside the French modernists. One major contribution of the magazine was the staging of three exhibitions in Moscow which brought to the Russian public the first taste of French Post-impressionist art. At the first exhibition Morozov acquired a work by Van Gogh, 'Night Café' for his collection. Larionov played an important role in the organisation of these exhibitions, each of which differed in emphasis from the last. The first displayed a large section of French painting separated from contemporary Russian works; for the second they were mixed together; by the third it was almost totally dominated by works by Larionov and Goncharova who by this date were in the eye of an incredibly prolific creative storm.

'Through the Nets, The Bathers' is a daring yet carefully constructed composition. The fisherman's net creates a diagonal grid slicing the picture up into small squares or diamonds. It appears that the artist painted the net first, forcing the landscape behind to be pieced together like a jigsaw. This creates tension between surface and depth. Through the net we can see a bather being playfully chased by a dog, fish suspended from a line, rocks and a second bather in the water. Close comparison can be made between this work and another of the same year, 'Bathers at Sunset, Odessa', 1904, oil on canvas, 46 by 55cm (former collection of A.K.Tomilina-Larionova, Paris). The treatment of colour in both compositions is similar, with a restricted palette of red, green and blue, and people are reduced to vague human shapes - some to such an extent that one can not be sure whether they are rocks or bathers. This reduction of the human form is untypical of his later primitivist works, but reappears again particularly in the 1920s and 30s in his depictions of the female nude. Another important work from 1904, The Garden, also demonstrates a similar use of colour and form in which the viewer must look twice in order to understand the image. Again here we have diagonal lines cutting through the picture in the form of furrows in the ground, with the trees relegated to the top right hand corner.

These works from 1904, including 'Through the Nets, Bathers', all display a fauve use of intense colour, albeit with restricted palette. Kovtun in his monograph on the artist describes it as 'the birth of a new painterly manner'. Similarly Soviet art historian Dmitri Sarabianov sees in them a natural embryo for what was to follow, 'an intermediate link can be observed between Impressionist and synthesist periods in Larionov's work, demonstrating the gradual nature of the evolution that prepared for the leap that took place in 1907'.
Y. Kovtun, "Mikhail Larionov 1881-1964", England, 1998, p.16 D. Sarabianov, "Russkaya zhivopis' kontsa 1900-kh - nachala 1910-kh godov", Moscow, 1971, p.102

CAPTIONS FOR TWO SUPPORTING IMAGES TO BE PLACED AT SIDE OF TEXT. DIGITAL REFS TO COME MONDAY AFTERNOON.


Bathers at Sunset, Odessa, 1904, oil on canvas, 46 by 55cm (former collection of A.K.Tomilina-Larionova, Paris).


The Garden, 1904, oil on canvas, 72.5 by 66cm (Russian Museum, St. Petersburg). This was exhibited in Diaghilev's 1906 Russian exhibition in Paris.