Maria Vasil'evna Iakunchikova (1870-1902)

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THE PROPERTY OF A LADY (LOTS 67-77) During her lifetime, Maria Vasil'evna Iakunchikova received critical acclaim from her peers: admired by Alexandre Benois, Sergei Diaghilev and Léon Bakst, her talent was compared to that of Isaak Levitan, Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov. In light of Iakunchikova's legacy, the paucity of information on the artist is staggering but perhaps an indication of the basis of her reputation; she was, and is, an artist's artist. Iakunchikova's importance to Russian art is just beginning to be appreciated; she was one of the brightest artistic phenomena of the Silver Age. Born into an influential merchant family, Iakunchikova was part of a privileged circle with family-ties to the art-patrons Savva Mamontov and Pavel Tretyakov. In 1882, Iakunchikova's sister married the artist Vasilii Polenov and from this point on Iakunchikova attended drawing sessions at their home, practising alongside other young artists such as Levitan, Serov, Korovin and Nesterov. In addition to lessons from N. Martynov, Iakunchikova enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1885. Following her first trip abroad in 1888 to Austria and Italy, Iakunchikova divided her time between France and Russia. Despite the stimulation provided by French artistic life, Iakunchikova was rejuvenated by her return trips to rural Russia. Her study at the Academie Julian under Bouguereau and Fleury may have provided the academic foundations for her art, but it was the time spent at the family estate of Vvedenskoe that gave her art its distinctive Russian flavour. In terms of style, Iakunchikova is most often associated with Russian Symbolism and Style Moderne, indeed she was a frequent contributor to Mir iskusstva. Russian Symbolism, with its constant search for the eternal in the finite and the subordination of reason and will to mood is expressed by the innate nostalgia of Iakunchikova's works; with its sorrowful sensation of the past which clings to the deserted mansions, old crumblings churches and secluded villages. The cult of the sinewy line, a feature of Style Moderne, sculpted Iakunchikova's stylised visions of rural Russia, turning the three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional design. Iakunchikova's interest in surface pattern, taken one step further by her experiments with pyrogravure with its incised contours, perhaps indicates a desire to fuse the figurative and applied arts. Iakunchikova's friendship with Elena Polenova, a key figure in the revival of Russian folk-art traditions at Abramtsevo (the Mamontov estate) encouraged her to experiment with a variety of different media, merging creative boundaries. At the time, Iakunchikova's premature death was treated as a great loss to Russian art; Diaghilev devoted an entire issue of Mir iskusstva to the artist Sergei Diaghilev refered to as 'the dear poet of Russian forests, pastures, village churchyards with their lopsided crosses, convent gates and village porches'. He added,'Yakunchikova's time was all too short for the things she might have done. But in all that she had time to do, harassed by...the bustle of Paris, she revealed the depths of a lovely talent, a profound feeling and affection for our Russian forests, oh so remote, 'those little pines and firs' which for her were instinct with religious feeling, and which she longed for all her life.' (S. Lifar, Serge Diaghilev - His life, his work, his legend, London, 1945)

Maria Vasil'evna Iakunchikova (1870-1902)

Abramtsevo

Details

Maria Vasil'evna Iakunchikova (1870-1902)
Abramtsevo
oil on canvas laid on board
15 1/8 x 12 in. (38.4 x 30.5 cm.)
Executed in 1898

Provenance

The family of the artist.
Thence by descent to the present owner.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, Maria Vasil'evna Iakunchikova's posthumous exhibition, Moscow, 1905, p. 12, no. 152.
M. Kiselev, Maria Iakunchikova, Moscow, 1979, p. 170.

Exhibited

Moscow, Maria Vasil'evna Iakunchikova's posthumous exhibition, 1905, no. 152.

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