Peter Nilouss

(1896-1943)

Paris

Footnotes

Provenance
Bertha Goloubovsky, great, great aunt of the present of the present owners, who lived with Nilouss in Paris from the 1920s until his death in 1943
Thence by direct descent to a private French collection


"Painting is delicate... like pollen on the wings of a butterfly...", Peter Nilouss

Nilouss was born in Baltssky Uyezd and moved as a child to Odessa. He later attended the art classes of Kyriak Kostandi where his precocious ability garnered praise and he went on to study at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, exhibiting in the Peredvizhniki exhibitions from 1891. The first stages of his artistic success were governed by independent creativity, his style influenced by everyday urban life. During the Russian Civil War, in 1920, he emigrated to Paris where his artistic focus changed and departed from the credo of the Peredvizhniki, moving towards impressionistic paintings that were occasionally saturated with a delicateness of colour and light.

Increasingly Nilouss came to prefer the landscape genre. In his memoir, he recalled that he was a faithful 'wanderer' for thirteen years, and "then the evolution from extreme realism to individualism began", characterised by his "mood palette" (P. Nilouss, Autobiographical note, Odessa's page, 1915, 13th June, C.2). Subsequently his 'third period' was characterised by "symbolic-romantic" and "retrospective" paintings which portrayed an aestheticizing reality with people strolling through romantic landscapes and streets. During this time Nilouss had come to understand that, for him, romanticism excluded realism, and that the impressionist approach was his way forward. "It took me nine years. Gradually I concluded that real art is within us, and that you need to draw what you feel. A new painting is distinguished by the fact that it never copies but reincarnates the narrative" (P. A. Nilouss,In search of the uncatchable, Voronezh, 2011, Kvarta, pp. 11-13.)

The 'fourth period' of his style revealed a break from romanticism and a move towards a 'modern' style characterised by French street views, still lives and women against the backdrops of landscapes. From a letter to E. Bukorezk in 1933, the artist writes, "Now I am looking for the motive of the streets and spend a lot of time looking for the narrative." (P. Nilouss, Letters from emigration, 1920-1937, Odessa, 2008.) The present painting portrays this fourth period of the artist's vision and a probable sketch for the present painting has the title "La rue Bois-le-Vent",executed in 1934. (P. A. Nilouss, In search of the uncatchable, Voronezh, 2011, Kvarta, pp. 69, image 25).