.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
We are grateful to Dr. Hab. Ekaterina Khmelnitskaya, Curator of Russian Porcelain at The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, for her assistance with cataloguing this lot.
A fascinating figure of the art world in his time, Séraphin Soudbinine led an adventurous and varied life. Following a period spent as a sailor on the Volga and later as an accomplished actor at the Moscow Art Theatre, Soudbinine developed a passionate interest in sculpture. On a trip to Paris Soudbinine met Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), an encounter that led to an apprenticeship in the French master’s studio and Soudbinine becoming one of his favourite students. Soudbinine settled in France in 1904, quickly gaining an international reputation, exhibiting at the Salon d’Automne from 1905 and the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1910. He made portraits of various talented artists and art patrons including Rodin himself, theatre director and producer Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), the opera singers Leonid Sobinov (1872-1934), Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938), the writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), the composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) and the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), among others. It had been suggested in the past that the present lot could be a portrait of Anna Pavlova.
A fascinating figure of the art world in his time, Séraphin Soudbinine led an adventurous and varied life. Following a period spent as a sailor on the Volga and later as an accomplished actor at the Moscow Art Theatre, Soudbinine developed a passionate interest in sculpture. On a trip to Paris Soudbinine met Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), an encounter that led to an apprenticeship in the French master’s studio and Soudbinine becoming one of his favourite students. Soudbinine settled in France in 1904, quickly gaining an international reputation, exhibiting at the Salon d’Automne from 1905 and the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1910. He made portraits of various talented artists and art patrons including Rodin himself, theatre director and producer Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), the opera singers Leonid Sobinov (1872-1934), Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938), the writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), the composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) and the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), among others. It had been suggested in the past that the present lot could be a portrait of Anna Pavlova.