Press Release London For Immediate Release

London | +44 (0)20 7293 6000 | Matthew Weigman | matthew.weigman@sothebys.com |

Simon Warren | simon.warren@sothebys.com

SOTHEBY’S SUMMER RUSSIAN ART SALES SERIES TO

PRESENT RARE AND IMPORTANT PAINTINGS, WORKS OF
ART, FABERGÉ AND ICONS

Ilya Efimovich Repin, Portrait of the Artists Wife, Vera Repin, dated 1878
Estimate: £1,000,000-
£1,000,000-1,500,000*
1,500,000*

SOTHEBY’S SUMMER SALES of Russian Art, which take place in London this June, will present for sale Russian
Paintings, Works of Art, Fabergé, Icons and Contemporary Art. The Evening auction of Important Russian Paintings
will take place on Monday, June 6, 2011,
2011 the Russian Paintings Day Sale will be staged on Tuesday, June 7, 2011 and
Russian Works of Art, Fabergé and Icons takes place on Wednesday, June 8, 2011.
2011 Combined, all three auctions are
estimated to realise in excess of £20 million.

Commenting on the forthcoming series, Jo Vickery, Senior Director and Head of Russian Art Department, Sotheby’s
London said: “Sotheby’s global total of $82 million achieved in 2010 for sales of Russian Art combined with the success of
our April Sale of Russian Art in New York, which brought more than $16 million, continue Sotheby’s leadership in this field.
Our forthcoming London auctions of Russian Art this June are set to realise in excess of £20 million and will be led by an
important group of paintings by Vereschagin.”
Important Russian Art Sale – Monday, June 6, 2011
Highlighting the sale will be Ilya Efimovich Repin’s (1844-1930) oil on canvas Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Vera Repin,
dated 1878, which is widely considered one of the finest portraits of the artist’s career. Repin first met Vera Shevtsova
(1855-1918) when she was only nine years old, and she inspired some of Repin’s most admired watercolour and pencil
portraits. This particular portrait remained in Vera’s collection, hanging in her flat on Karpovka until she died, at which
point it was sold by her daughter.

Vera fell in love with Repin while she was still a student at the Mariinsky Institute. She was only 16 years old when they
were married in 1872, and Repin was ten years her senior. Though no match for him intellectually, she was a
sympathetic and appealing character, simple and childlike in her needs. Their relationship became stormy, and nine
years after the present work was painted the couple separated; they reunited in 1894 but the marriage finally fell apart
in 1900. The present masterpiece dates from a less troubled period of their lives and remains the only known,
published portrait of Vera Repin to exist outside museum collections. Since it is, above all, his portraiture that has
earned Repin international fame as one of the greatest Western European practitioners of this genre, the re-
emergence of an intimate family portrait from this period is a major event for all collectors and scholars of his work.
The painting is estimated at £1,000,000-1,500,000.

Further highlights in the sale include a group of

outstanding paintings from renowned Russian artist
Vasily Vasilievich Vereschagin (1842-1904). These
museum quality artworks are fresh to the market
and have not been seen publicly since the 1900s.
Shipka Pass is the most impressive canvas ever to be
offered at auction of Vereschagin’s Balkan series,
which consists of 25 paintings and 50 studies
inspired by his first hand impressions of the Russo-
Turkish war of 1877-78. Not only does the present work mark a pivotal event of Russian history, but in its restraint and
minimalism, is also one of Vereshchagin’s most modern compositions. In anticipation of hostilities, moved by
patriotism, and as Vereschagin simply put it, filled with ‘a great desire to see with my own eyes a regular European war,’
the artist requested to join the staff of the Russian army as a volunteer in October 1878. Vereschagin was anxious that
his series of Balkan paintings should not be broken up, but although the future Tsar Alexander III and Grand Duke
Nicholas both expressed an interest in acquiring them, some of the canvases were deemed too controversial and the
Prussian military attaché even advised the Tsar to buy and destroy the entire series. In the event, Pavel Tretyakov
purchased five of the most important works; Ivan Tereschenko, a Kiev sugar baron, acquired five of the other large
canvases together with a number of studies and the remainder of the series was dispersed across the world following an
auction in New York in 1891. This oil on canvas is estimated at £300,000-500,000.

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 On Campaign, also from Vereschagin’s Balkan series comes from an Important
European Collection. The painting bears a hand-written authentication in
Cyrillic by Vereschagin’s widow dated October 15, 1904, suggesting that it
remained in the artist’s collection until his death in 1904, at which time his widow
was forced to sell the work to pay off debts. On Campaign is an extraordinarily
complex composition and perhaps the most artistically ambitious of the entire
Balkan series. The painting is estimated at £400,000-600,000.

The Taj Mahal, Evening, is one of the most important

works to have resulted from Vereschagin's trip to India
from 1874 to 1876. The artist often approached the same
monument or landscape at different times of day and
from varying perspectives, trying to catch the
particularities of the changing light, and he is known to
have painted several versions of the Taj Mahal. A smaller
view from the river in bright daylight is a highlight of the
collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Two
additional views of the Taj from the garden, in the
morning and the evening, were included in the sale at the American Art Galleries in New York in 1891, when the
present work was also first sold. The intensity of color in Vereschagin's Indian paintings surpassed that of his earlier
works, including the Turkestan series, and astonished critics at home and abroad. The painting is estimated at
£250,000-450,000.

A further work is Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky’s (1817-1900) oil on canvas Shepherds with Their Flock at Sunset in
the Crimea, dated 1859. The painting depicts grazing sheep, a theme which appears variously throughout the artist's
oeuvre. Aivazovsky often depicted sheep grazing peacefully
on the Crimean steppe or in Ukraine; before shearing; bathing
in the Black Sea; during a rainstorm, or packed into a solid
mass under the heat of the evening sun, as in the present
painting. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s the artist
returned again and again to a theme which clearly captivated
him. More than ten pictures with a similar subject are known to
exist and some of these paintings can now be found in

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Museums in Omsk, Irkutsk, Odessa, Ashgabat, Ulan-Ude, and Chelyabinsk. One of these paintings — Sheep at
Pasture (1850s) — is held at the Tretyakov Gallery. This museum-quality artwork is estimated at £800,000 -1,200,000.

Another highlight from the forthcoming Important Russian Art

Sale is Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova’s (1884-1967) oil on
canvas Reclining Nude. Acquired from the family of the artist by
the present owner, this piece is one of the finest large-scale oils by
Serebriakova ever to come to auction, and shows the artist at the
height of her powers. The artwork recalls the nudes of Edgar
Degas and Edouard Manet; Serebriakova had arrived in Paris in
the mid-1920s and was undoubtedly influenced by these masters
in her adoptive homeland. Serebriakova’s appreciation of the
plasticity of the female form was extraordinary, yet from the mid-1930s, she painted increasingly fewer nudes. Several
of the Russian girls in Paris who used to pose for her got married around 1934, and without the means to pay for
professional models, Serebriakova simply lacked the opportunity to return to one of her favourite subjects. Reclining
Nude is property from a private European collection and is estimated at £600,000-800,000.

Among the two contemporary artworks in the upcoming Russian Art auction
will be Erik Bulatov’s (b.1933) oil on canvas Winter. The painting was completed
in 1988, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, a period widely considered
to be the artist’s best. The painting comes from a private collection and is
estimated at £60,000-80,000.

Also featured is Alexander Evgenievich Yakolev’s (1887-1938) oil on canvas Opera in

Peking, which is dated 1918. This important painting is estimated at £800-1,200,000.
One of the most important works to be painted during the artist’s trip to the Far East
in 1918, it underscores the artist’s belief that an appreciation of the richness of ancient
Chinese civilisation was crucial in grasping the essence of modern day China.
Exceptional in its daring use of perspective, Yakovlev’s powerful composition is
believed to depict a scene from a 16th century play by the poet Tang, The Peony
Pavilion, which subsequently became the template for the story of a perfect love.

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Russian Works of Art, Fabergé and Icons on Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Highlighting the forthcoming Works of Art, Fabergé

and Icons sale is a Silver Service for Tea and Coffee,
dated 1899-1908. Designed by prominent silversmith
Andrei Bragin, this neo-Rococo style set is comprised
of a large samovar, tray, coffee pot, covered sugar
bowl, creamer, small bowl and a cake basket. Bragin
was best known, between 1852 and 1917, for
producing very fine work following the Historicism
trend, and examples of his art are in leading Russian
museums, including the State Historical Museum in Moscow. This impressive set is estimated at £100,000-150,000.

Included in the Fabergé section of the sale will be two Fabergé Silver and
Bowenite Table Lamps by Julius Rappoport (image right), dated 1899-1908.
These lamps, originally intended and almost certainly sold by Fabergé as a
pair with the same scratched inventory numbers, are reunited here after
having been separated early in their history. One of them remained in a
private European collection, where it was passed down through generations
with the original silver fittings preserved. The other once belonged in an
important American collection. Electrical systems for domestic use first
appeared in St Petersburg in the 1880s; some early Fabergé electric
lamps were used in the private rooms of members of the Imperial Family.
Most such lamps were the work of Julius Rappoport, who specialised in making functional pieces. The two lots are
estimated at £50,000-70,000 and £60,000-80,000, respectively.

Among the Icons being offered for sale is a 19th century (last
quarter) icon of the Savior, which is estimated at £40,000-
60,000. The work, entitled The Transfiguration on Mount
Tabor, is held in a gilt-metal and enamel frame, decorated
with foliate forms in the Old Russian style, and applied with
colourful enamel roundels. The border of the painting is
decorated with enamel motifs and pilasters. This icon is
stylistically close to the icon of St. Pelagia and Saint John
Klimakos attributed to Vasily Petrovich Vereschagin (1835-1909), executed for The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
in Moscow, circa 1879-1931.

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 Another highlight of the Works of Art, Fabergé and Icons sale is a Bust
Portrait of Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, by Prosper d'Épinay, dated
1836-1914. The bust represents the Empress in her full court-dress: wearing a
sash, a Star of the Order of St. Catherine, a tiara imitating a Russian
kokoshnik with a veil, and pearl and diamond jewellery. Commissioned by the
Emperor Alexander III in 1887 at the height of d'Épinay’s popularity,two
versions of the portrait are known to exist, one in plaster and one in marble.
While the plaster bust is preserved by the family of the artist, the
whereabouts of the marble version was unknown until now. This distinguished
sculpture is estimated at £30,000-50,000.

Additional Auction Highlights Include:

A FINE AND IMPRESSIVE SILVER-GILT AND

CLOISONNÉ ENAMEL KOVSH, NIKOLAI ALEXEEV,
MOSCOW, 1901
Property from a Private Collection, Europe
Estimate: £30,000-50,000

A RARE FABERGÉ JEWELLED GOLD FAN, WORKMASTER

HENRIK WIGSTRÖM,
ST PETERSBURG, 1910
Estimate: £30,000-50,000

A RARE SILVER-GILT AND ENAMEL PICTORIAL BOX,

PROBABLY FEODOR RÜCKERT, 1911
Commissioned by Marshak, Kiev
Estimate: £30,000-50,000
Notes to Editor:
*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium.

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