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* 18. SUDEIKIN, SERGEI (1882-1946)
Porcelain Figurines in a Landscape, signed.
Oil on canvas, 43.5 by 48 cm
70,000-90,000 GBP
Provenance: Russian Pictures, Sotheby’s London, 4 June 2013, lot 261.
Acquired at the above auction by the present owner.
Porcelain and flowers: the decorative potential of this combination had at one time been appreciated for its full worth by the Flemish painters. With the passage of time, however, this kind of still life fell out of favour and was glimpsed only rarely in the pages of art history, until a new wave of enthusiasm for porcelain and floral motifs engulfed the culture of Art Nouveau. The vulnerable frailty of picked flowers and fine china literally became an obsession in passéiste culture as the 20th century moved from its first decade into its second. Their fragile beauty was forever being rhapsodised in Symbolist and Acmeist poetry and they were depicted in a flood of still life work by the recent Blue Rose and World of Art painters.
The Landscape with Porcelain Figurines could be considered one of the most important and expressive examples of the “porcelain and flowers” theme in the work of Sergei Sudeikin. Images of porcelain figurines first appeared in the artist’s compositions in the 1910s. In Sudeikin’s paintings these china marquises and shepherdesses almost always have a complex relationship with the reality of the world that surrounds them. In the present composition, they almost act as the continuation of the landscape, its staffage. The depicted landscape is itself a picture within a picture, a space that is not real, but rather extremely theatrical. The artist emphasises this by introducing a strip of ornamental wallpaper above the idyllic village scene and thus revealing the mock backdrop. The flowers placed between the figurines also look artificial and exude a passionless, timeless beauty. Through this work Sudeikin transmits the quintessential aestheticism of the World of Art – an illusory world populated by ephemeral images. Their life is only a magical dream created by the artist’s fantasy – enchanting precisely because of its impermanence, and ready to vanish like a sleeping vision. The artist casts a sort of haze over these still lifes, a gauze that insists the painting be perceived as a beautiful reverie.
If in other compositions by Sudeikin, such as Saxon Figurines (1911, The State Russian Museum), Flowers and Statuette (1900s, The State Tretyakov Gallery) or the Still Lifes (1909 and 1911, both in the State Russian Museum) the objects often conceive a game among themselves, and the china marquises and shepherdesses resembling those by Meissen or Sevres play out dramatic scenes, then in this composition serenity reigns in a static and enchanted respite. The bright village landscape corresponds with the naïve Staffordshire figurines. Sudeikin particularly appreciated the peculiar beauty of these gaudy and lurid sculptures, which resonate so well with his stylized folk paintings and theatre design masterpieces – the ballets Les Noces and Petrushka for the Pavlova Company. It is no coincidence that these charming subjects, frozen under their decorative trees, appear in a whole series of works by the artist during this time.
Notes on symbols:
* Indicates 5% Import Duty Charge applies.
◎ Indicates the lot is located outside the UK. Successful bidders would collect their lots outside the UK after payment.
Ω Indicates 20% Import Duty Charge applies.
§ Indicates Artist's Resale Right applies.
† Indicates Standard VAT scheme applies, and the rate of 20% VAT will be charged on both hammer price and premium.