Dealers and auctioneers alike offer remarkable collections and stand-out examples of stock as well as hosting grand events to mark the various occasions. This year, highlights include a number of paintings by the ‘first female Cubist’ and the collection of classical music legend Rostropovich. Here are a selection of paintings and other objects to buy or simply admire around London.
Sotheby’s
This Russian malachite veneered and gilt-bronze centre table from c.1840 is included in the sale of Rostropovich Vishnevskaya’s private collection at Sotheby’s on November 27. The cellist and conductor, along with his wife Galina Vishnevskaya, were known as a the ‘golden couple of classical music’. The dedicated sale includes more than 100 lots including furniture, personal jewellery, Russian works of art, books and musical instruments from the couple’s collection and has a combined estimate in excess of £2.7m. The table has an estimate of £30,000-50,000.
Roseberys
Featured in Roseberys studio sale of the ‘first female Cubist’ Marie ‘Marevna’ Vorobieff (1892-1984) is her L’Homme aux boules de Pétanque á Juan-les-Pins (1937), which has an estimate of £8000-12,000. Marevna, reputedly given her nickname by the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky, worked closely with Picasso and Braque. This collection offers a rare opportunity to acquire paintings produced during the Cubist period along with photographs, drawings and letters from a single-owner sale comprising more than 300 lots offered on December 5.
Bonhams
Bonhams is celebrating Russian Week with a number of events including a book launch for Bonhams’ consultant specialist Sophie Law, who has published her first novel, Olga’s Egg. The book launch at Bonhams’ Bond Street includes a preview of its forthcoming Russian sale on November 28. Among the lots at this sale is this imperial presentation jewelled, gold, enamel and hardstone kovsh, a traditional drinking vessel, estimated at £70,000-90,000, by Fabergé workmaster Michael Perchin, St. Petersburg, 1896.
James Butterwick
Forty-seven works by Soviet avant-garde artist Yakov Chernikhov (1889-1951) are on offer from dealer James Butterwick’s exhibition The Soviet Piranesi, including the one pictured from his Course of Dimensional Art Series produced in the mid-1920s. Chernikov was primarily an architect, but a number of works in the show cover his more theoretical side. He worked on new principles of drawing based on symmetry, the relationship between component parts and colours. The show is held in association with Alon Zakaim Fine Art and will be on display in that gallery on Dover Street from December 5–January 21.
Christie’s
The first part of Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin from 1825 is included in Christie’s sale of Russian literary first editions and manuscripts from the R Eden Martin Collection on November 28. The rare book is offered in its original paper cover with an estimate of £25,000-35,000. It is among 228 lots, most from Russia’s gold and silver age of literature (the early 19th and early 20th centuries). It was built over the past two decades by a lawyer in Chicago and is one of the last great private collections of Russian literature in the US. Also on offer are a first edition of Gogol’s first masterpiece Vechera na khutore bliz dikan’ki and Dostoevsy’s Brothers Karamazov.
MacDougall’s
Petr Konchalovsky’s The Game of Billiards, Aristarkh Lentulov and Petr Konchalovsky is one of the highlights at MacDougall’s Russian art sale on November 28. From a leading European collection of Russian art, it depicts the artist and his friend, both of whom were founders of the famous Russian avant-garde group Jack of Diamonds. This is one of the artist’s most highly acclaimed works from that period and has been exhibited several times. It has an estimate of £1.5m-2m.
