The traditional “Russian Week” taking place in London from November 23 to December 2 is already the second in 2020, which is not rich in art events. Back in the summer, the pandemic caused a split in the ranks of gallery owners, and one of the four regular organizers of the auction, MacDougall’s, did not wait for the general collection collectors and auctioneers and spoke alone a month earlier. Such a demarche, however, did not give visible results – not all lots were sold, and even highlights with moderate prices were sold within the estimate. So, at the October auction, the emblematic and monumental “Pine Forest” by Ivan Shishkin, with an estimate of 400,000-600,000 pounds, was bought for 508,200 pounds. And the recently discovered painting by Nicholas Roerich “Pechora. Entrance to the monastery “and was not sold at all.
But the remaining trio – Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams – true to tradition and once again acts as a united front. Each house will hold its auctions in the studio format – in the hall there will be only the bidder and the staff taking bids by phone. Participants and spectators will be able to watch the live broadcast and bid by phone and online. As Aleksey Tizenhausen, head of the Russian art department at Christie’s, told Vedomosti, this form of holding, on the one hand, is dictated by the “current turbulent times”, on the other hand, makes the buying process more convenient. “Collectors will be able to follow developments in peace as the host offers lots one by one. Online auctions go on all lots at the same time and, of course, turn your head,” he said.
Auction house Christie’s, which made a summer session of 3.3 million pounds in revenue, opens the “Russian Week” auction on November 23rd. More than 280 lots have been announced, including a set of works by the world-artist Maria Yakunchikova – paintings, drawings and even her art nouveau gallery easel (£200-300). The house received an exclusive sale of the artist’s heritage from her descendants from Switzerland. The 37 objects put up for sale are already the third and final round of the sale, which successfully fits into the circle of Yakunchikova’s retrospective anniversary exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery. The range of prices for the works of the artist forgotten after her death is still quite moderate – from 2,000 to 10,000 pounds sterling.
With another metropolitan exhibition – “Carl Faberge and Fyodor Ruckert. Masterpieces of Russian Enamel” at the Moscow Kremlin Museums – the main lot of the section of arts and crafts also rhymes. This is a large box with Fyodor Ruckert’s enamel painting, marked with the Faberge hallmark (£150,000–£200,000). Similar works with a view of the Kremlin are kept in the royal collection of Great Britain and the well-known collection of Beilin-Macagon in the USA.
One of the most intriguing auction lots is two travel sculptures by Eugene Lansere (each £100,000-150,000). Pictures of the full-size bronze “Kyrgyz hunter with a golden eagle” and “Royal Falconer”, sent to the Russian department of Christie’s from South Africa, were accompanied by the question: “Do the equestrian figures have any value?” It turned out that a pair of equestrian compositions set off on distant wanderings from Ireland, where they had been in the collection of Baron Rossmore since the beginning of the 20th century. His daughter Lady Mary Bailey settled in South Africa with her husband, a diamond magnate. Both were fans of equestrian animalism, and after the Second World War the sculptures left for their estate in Cape Town. These castings of famous sculptures, made in 1878, were not previously known to researchers.
The picturesque section of the auction will be a win-win set of classics of Russian art. This is the landscape of Nicholas Roerich “Yarilin’s Calls”, which remained unsold at Christie’s in November 2019 and has now fallen in price by almost 300,000 pounds sterling (1.2-1.8 million pounds sterling), and Aivazovsky’s large marina “Genoese Tower on the Black sea” (700,000 – 1 million pounds sterling), and a soft pink portrait of the naked daughter of Zinaida Serebryakova Ekaterina (400,000-600,000 pounds sterling), and the canonical Russian landscape with the figure of a nun Mikhail Nesterov (200,000-300,000 pounds sterling) .
House Bonhams in recent years has clearly sags in the selection of items for auctions of Russian art – there are simply no million-dollar lots. However, focusing on the low and medium price segments, Bonhams does not give up and finds interesting works. In particular, for his auction on November 25, he also got hold of Nesterov, the icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, created by the artist based on sketches for the mosaics of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent in Moscow. The work was taken out of Russia at the turn of the 1960s–1970s. and has since been in the “aristocratic European collection”. The estimate is 80,000–100,000 pounds.
Another Savior – the work of Vasily Surikov – is a sketch for his monumental canvas “The Conquest of Siberia by Ermak Timofeevich” from the collection of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. On it is a banner with the face of Christ, which flutters over the Cossack squad attacking the enemy. The sketch was made by Surikov from life – from the same historical banner, which is stored in the Kremlin Armory. The work was first sold at Sotheby’s in 2009 for £15,000. It is now valued at £60,000-70,000.
Another potential painting hit is Mikhail Larionov’s 1909 still life with fish and flowers. Done in a neo-primitivist manner, it comes from the collection of British judge Bruce Griffiths and is offered at auction for £60,000-80,000.
In the decorative arts section, the hopes of the Bonhams auctioneers are also tied to the name of Fabergé. Among the highlights are a pair of cabinet clocks created for the famous company by the jeweler Heinrich Wigström, who had a hand in more than one legendary Easter egg. For one watch made of gold and enamel, they ask for 80,000–120,000 pounds sterling, for others, coming from the apartments of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, 60,000–80,000 pounds sterling.
Auction house Sotheby’s in the summer online auction “Russian Week” bypassed everyone with a revenue of about 8 million pounds and has every chance now to repeat the success. In addition to the usual two auctions – painting, drawing and sculpture (December 1) and decorative arts (December 2) – Sotheby’s is entrusted with the sale of Faberge items and other objects from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum (December 2). The museum set is not numerous, only 17 lots – but shock. Among the tops are a two-tone topaz vase by Mikhail Perkhin, presented by Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich to his French actress-mistress (£250,000-350,000), charming flowers made of precious and semi-precious stones (from £120,000) and a mass of stone-cut figurines of animals.
Royal provenance will dominate other auctions on December 2. The most expensive things will be a large painted porcelain dish of the Imperial Factory, presented for Christmas by Nicholas I to his sister-in-law, Princess Alexandrine of Prussia, in 1852 (500,000–700,000 pounds sterling), and a luxurious vase, presented to the emperor himself by the factory staff a few years earlier ( £200,000–£300,000).
Warming up picturesque auction on December 1 promises to be no less exciting than the competition. It has all the attractive names for collectors. For example, the early Natalia Goncharova with Winter Night and a surprise landscape on the back (£1.5-2 million), two monumental canvases by Aivazovsky with a shipwreck (£1.2-1.8 million) and an idyllic Spanish lagoon (1-1.5 million pounds), as well as works by Henryk Semiradsky, Ilya Repin, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Pyotr Konchalovsky.
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