oil on canvas
85 x 103 cm (33 1/2 x 40 1/2 in.)
signed and dated lower right

PROVENANCE
Purchased by Leon Leonidoff, Chief Producer of Radio City Music Hall, circa 1937 in Paristhence in the same Family CollectionThe present lot is a rare and highly accomplished work by the Russian realist artist Klavdi Vasilievich Lebedev.  Klavdi Lebedev was celebrated for his historical and genre compositions, featuring themes of Russian history of the 16th and 17th Centuries. He was especially well known for his paintings of the lives of the Boyars, of which the present lot is a superb example.Lebedev, born into a peasant family, lived and worked in Moscow and later St. Petersburg.  He studied at the Stroganov Institute and Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture from 1875-1881, with Perov, Sorokin, and Vladimir Makovsky, with whom his work is often compared. Lebedev later taught at the same schools from 1890, as well as the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1894-1898, where he was named an Academician from 1879, and a member of the Academy from 1906.  He was a member of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) artists group as of 1891, with whom he had exhibited since 1884.Boyarina was purchased circa 1937 in Paris by Mr. Leon Leonidoff and his wife Madeleine.  Leon Leonidoff was the Chief Producer of Radio City Music Hall in New York City, where he worked from 1932 until 1974.  Under Mr. Leonidoff's direction, Radio City Music Hall developed into the legendary theater that it is today, known for its extravagant productions featuring orchestras, choruses, soloists, and of course, the Rockettes.  Born in Dubosari, present-day Moldova, to a prominent and well-to-do Bessarabian grain dealer, Mr. Leonidoff was a legendary and widely respected figure in the New York theatre world.