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Lot Essay
This pair of bronzes portray characters from the historical novel Prince Serebryany by Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. The heroine, Elena, marries Boyar Morozov in order to escape the attentions of Prince Viazemsky. Morozov then accuses Viazemsky of kidnapping Elena, while Viazemsky claims she went with him willingly. In the scene depicted by Lanceray, Tsar Ivan the Terrible resolves the dispute by ordering the two men to fight in single combat. The details of the figures (such as Boyar Morozov's flanged mace, and the breed of Prince Viazemsky's horse, an argamak) are taken directly from Tolstoy's novel.
Contemporary photographs attest that these models were among the Lanceray bronzes exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. The next year, Tiffany and Co. began retailing Lanceray bronzes at their Union Square showroom in New York. According to a handwritten note that accompanied these bronzes when they were purchased by the grandparents of the present owner in 1925, their first owner was Colonel Richard M. Hoe, the inventor of the rotary printing press. After Hoe's death in 1886, the bronzes passed to his son-in-law, John Harper, of the publishing house Harper Brothers. The January 1889 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine included an article about Lanceray bronzes retailed by Tiffany's which featured an illustration of the
'Oprichnik', noting that it was one of the 'only pieces we have seen
from Lancere's [sic] hands that that verge on the imaginative in sentiment or the romantic in treatment.' C. Cook, 'Russian Bronzes', Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. LXXVII, New York, 1889, pp. 283, 285.
For more about this model, see G. Sudbury, et al., Evgueni Alexandrovich Lanceray: le sculpteur russe du cheval, Paris, 2006, pp. 107-108, illustrated.
Contemporary photographs attest that these models were among the Lanceray bronzes exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. The next year, Tiffany and Co. began retailing Lanceray bronzes at their Union Square showroom in New York. According to a handwritten note that accompanied these bronzes when they were purchased by the grandparents of the present owner in 1925, their first owner was Colonel Richard M. Hoe, the inventor of the rotary printing press. After Hoe's death in 1886, the bronzes passed to his son-in-law, John Harper, of the publishing house Harper Brothers. The January 1889 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine included an article about Lanceray bronzes retailed by Tiffany's which featured an illustration of the
'Oprichnik', noting that it was one of the 'only pieces we have seen
from Lancere's [sic] hands that that verge on the imaginative in sentiment or the romantic in treatment.' C. Cook, 'Russian Bronzes', Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. LXXVII, New York, 1889, pp. 283, 285.
For more about this model, see G. Sudbury, et al., Evgueni Alexandrovich Lanceray: le sculpteur russe du cheval, Paris, 2006, pp. 107-108, illustrated.