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Lot Essay
In the Crimea, in Gurzuf, I found a wonderful little piece of land right on the sea, bought it and built a house there, a miraculous house.
Konstantin Korovin quoted in I. Zilbershtein and I. Samkov, Konstantin Korovin vspominaet, Moscow, 1990, p. 299.
From 1910 until 1917 Konstantin Korovin escaped annually to the Crimea to summer in Gurzuf. Here, warmed by the sun, frequently playing host to friends and acquaintances such as Ilya Repin, Vasily Surikov and Maxim Gorky, he painted many of his most vibrant works, one of the finest of which, Pier in Gurzuf, 1914, forms part of the collection of St Petersburg's State Russian Museum.
Korovin was the first Russian painter to truly engage with the work of the French Impressionists. The artist's appreciation for the Impressionists' choice of subject-matter and palette was apparent from 1885 onwards when he first visited Paris. However, his distinctive mastery lies in part in his commitment to representing nature faithfully: Whatever I painted, whether a street or a house, I could not be satisfied until I had captured nature's very breath, the very motif (the artist quoted in A. Kamensky, Konstantin Korovin, Leningrad, 1988, p. 4). As such, where Korovin's ventures to Norway and Russia's bleak North produced severe, sombre landscapes, the riotous colours, multitude of hues and the bright light of the Crimea inspired joyous paintings such as the present lot.
This composition, executed towards the end of Korovin's highly sought-after Crimean period, recalls one of his most accomplished still lifes, Roses and Violets (1912, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). Infused with light, the pinks of the roses exploding against the azure of the sea, Korovin explained the sentiment at the core of his work as:...the beauty and joy of life. The re-creation of this joy is the very essence of my picture, of every part of every piece of canvas I ever painted, of my ego....
Konstantin Korovin quoted in I. Zilbershtein and I. Samkov, Konstantin Korovin vspominaet, Moscow, 1990, p. 299.
From 1910 until 1917 Konstantin Korovin escaped annually to the Crimea to summer in Gurzuf. Here, warmed by the sun, frequently playing host to friends and acquaintances such as Ilya Repin, Vasily Surikov and Maxim Gorky, he painted many of his most vibrant works, one of the finest of which, Pier in Gurzuf, 1914, forms part of the collection of St Petersburg's State Russian Museum.
Korovin was the first Russian painter to truly engage with the work of the French Impressionists. The artist's appreciation for the Impressionists' choice of subject-matter and palette was apparent from 1885 onwards when he first visited Paris. However, his distinctive mastery lies in part in his commitment to representing nature faithfully: Whatever I painted, whether a street or a house, I could not be satisfied until I had captured nature's very breath, the very motif (the artist quoted in A. Kamensky, Konstantin Korovin, Leningrad, 1988, p. 4). As such, where Korovin's ventures to Norway and Russia's bleak North produced severe, sombre landscapes, the riotous colours, multitude of hues and the bright light of the Crimea inspired joyous paintings such as the present lot.
This composition, executed towards the end of Korovin's highly sought-after Crimean period, recalls one of his most accomplished still lifes, Roses and Violets (1912, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). Infused with light, the pinks of the roses exploding against the azure of the sea, Korovin explained the sentiment at the core of his work as:...the beauty and joy of life. The re-creation of this joy is the very essence of my picture, of every part of every piece of canvas I ever painted, of my ego....