Description:

ALEXANDER SAMOKHVALOV (RUSSIAN 1894-1971)

Portrait of Sergei Rankevich,
oil on canvas
87.5 x 100 cm (34 1/2 x 39 3/4 in.)

PROVENANCE
Collection of Sergei Rinkevich
Thence by descent in the family

LOT NOTES
Sold along a signed and notarized letter of provenance from the grandson of Sergei Rinkevich (copy available upon request)

When Samokhvalov produced this work in the early 1950s, he was renowned for monumental Socialist Realist history paintings, as well as intimate portraits in interior settings, including the present and Girl in an Interior (sold for $131,000, including buyer's premium, at Shapiro Auctions, December 10, 2016, lot 7). The sitter, Professor Sergei Rinkevich, was an eminent electrical engineer and professor, best known as the purveyor of the electrical drive in the USSR. Dr. Rinkevich marshalled the founding of the world's first university department dedicated to the improvement of the drive, which, under his directorship in the 1920s and 30s, launched the rapid electrification of the Soviet heavy industry and navy.

According to the letter provided by the sitter's grandson, who witnessed the making of the work, Samokhvalov painted the image over several sessions in the family's Leningrad apartment in the early 1950s. Capturing the likeness of one of the nation's distinguished scientists, Samokhvalov shows Dr. Rinkevich deep in thought, his fingers bookmarking a red volume -- a pose reminiscent of Renaissance and Baroque portraits of scholars, such as Bronzino's Portrait of a Young Man with a Book in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. With characteristic economy of brushwork, Samokhvalov pictures his subject attentively and at a considerable scale, demonstrating his hand as a leading Soviet portraitist.

Alexander Samokhvalov, one of the foremost representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, began his artistic career in 1914 at the Higher Art School at the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he studied under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Unlike many of his peers at the academy and the Mir iskusstva circle, such as Eugene Lanceray, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, or Alexander Osmerkin, in the late 1920s Samokhvalov enthusiastically embraced the development of Socialist Realism for which he is remembered. As in his most recognizable work — Girl in a Football Shirt, awarded the gold medal at the International Art Fair in Paris (which also exhibited Pablo Picasso's Guernica) — his paintings from the 1930s often showcase the first generation of Soviet women as the face of modernity and strength.

CONDITION
Observed out of frame. The painting is in excellent orginial condition. With no issues to report. Inspection under UV shows no signs of restoration.

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November 7, 2020 10:00 AM EST
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