Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev

(Russian, 1878-1927)

Interior

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Europe

The present lot is offered with an official expertise from The Repin Expertise Centre, dated 03 March 2021, signed by O.D. Atroschenko and E.V. Gordeeva, and an expertise from S.A Pisareva, dated 09 December 2020.

The offered lot, Interior, 1920s, is a charming example of Boris Kustodiev's sense of playfulness. With a masterstroke typical of his inventiveness, the artist infused the painting with references to his own works and life story. In this warm and inviting scene with a table set with the paraphernalia of domesticity, Kustodiev depicts his own paintings arranged on the wall in the background, such that the apparently empty room is actually populated with the people and the tableaux of his own paintings.

Beyond the still-life on the table, a portrait of a young girl is displayed as the focal point of the composition. As the viewer looks at her, the gaze of the small child is directed beyond her observers as she peers knowingly into the distance. The portrait shown is signed by Kustodiev and is very possibly an unidentified painting of his daughter Irina, notable for its similarity to a pencil portrait of her from 1906, as well as a larger oil portrait from the same year in the collection of the National Gallery of Belarus. The other paintings arranged on the wall are stylized versions of known works by the artist painted between the 1910s and 1920s, depicted such that particular, memorable features stand out. In the upper left corner, the painting shows a well-dressed couple walking, a nod to Kustodiev's A merchant and his wife taking a walk. Autumn walk, 1922 (private collection). Beneath it is shown a detail which corresponds directly to Landscape with a flower bed, 1917 (Far Eastern Arts Museum), while the fir tree in the painting on the right suggests Evening Landscape, 1917, and just above the chair, a possible rendering of children in fancy dress, suggestive of a pastel of the same subject from 1909 in the Russian State Museum.

Not quite a mise en abyme, the technique used by Kustodiev is self-reflexive; the embedding of his own works within the composition of another is recursive and fractal – a sort of 'matryoshka' type stacking of references to himself, his life and his context.

In the 1920s, the artist was living at the house of E.M. Mikhailov on Vvedenskaya Street in St. Petersburg and it is very possible that this painting shows an interior from that very house, the same house in which he is photographed at work in his studio.

With a style so evocative of the bourgeois softness of Auguste Renoir, Kustodiev's paintings are steeped with a tenderness for the Russian way of life. The bright colours – the characteristic leafy green, the blues and reds – all combine harmoniously to hymn the beguiling and enchanting soul of Russia.