Boris Grigoriev (Russian, 1886-1939). "Toilers of the Fields" from the "Raseya" series, circa 1920 . G...

Description

Boris Grigoriev (Russian, 1886-1939)
"Toilers of the Fields" from the "Raseya" series, circa 1920
Gouache and pastel on paper mounted on board
27-3/4 x 31 inches (70.5 x 78.7 cm) (work)
31-1/4 x 34-1/2 inches (79.3 x 87.6 cm) (framed)
Dated 920 and signed Boris Grigoriev lower right

PROVENANCE:
Boris Grigoriev;
Gladys Roosevelt Dick, acquired from the artist, circa 1922;
Jean Schermerhorn Roosevelt, inherited from the above, 1926;
Thence by descent.

EXHIBITED:
Exhibition of Painting and Drawings by Boris Grigoriev, Worcester Art Museum, January 2-14, 1923, Cat. No. 3;
Exhibition of Russian Painting and Sculpture, Brooklyn Museum, New York, January 23-February 28, 1923, Cat. No. 103;
Paintings and Drawings by Boris Grigoriev, The New Gallery, New York, 18 November-15 December, 1923.

ILLUSTRATED:
Grigoriev, Boris Dmitrievich. Raseya [РУСЬ]. Potsdam and Berlin: Müller & Co. / S. Efron, 1921 and 1922 eds.
A photograph of this work, titled "Peasants" on the verso, is retained in the G.R.D. Studio records, 1921-1970. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. (Rolls 4015-4017)

LITERATURE:
Exhibition catalogue: Exhibition of Paintings by Boris Grigoriev, Worcester Art Museum, 1924, No. 35.
Exhibition catalogue: Exhibition of Russian Painting and Sculpture, Brooklyn Museum, New York, January 23-February 28, 1923.
Exhibition catalogue: Paintings and Drawings by Boris Grigoriev, The New Gallery, New York, November 18-December 15, 1923.

Bibliography:
Grigoriev, Boris Dmitrievich. Raseya [РУСЬ]. Potsdam and Berlin: Müller & Co. / S. Efron, 1922.



Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev. Toilers of the Fields. Oil on canvas

Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev's painting Toilers of the Fields belongs to his famous series of paintings and drawings titled Raseya (Rus'), which the artist began in 1917. Emerging at the height of the revolutionary upheavals, the series largely determined the artist's further creative development, bringing him-at just over thirty years of age-recognition both in Russia and abroad. Raseya was completed in emigration: two editions of the book of the same name were published in Berlin (in 1921 and 1922), featuring forewords by prominent German and Russian writers and critics (O. Bi, P. Barkhan, A. Benois, A. Tolstoy, A. Shaikevich), along with Grigoriev's own text. These editions included new paintings that reflected a shift in the artist's interpretation of the theme-now viewed in emigration within a broader context-including Toilers of the Fields.

In this work, as in the Raseya series as a whole, Grigoriev is fascinated by the Russian people caught in a web of tragic social upheavals yet preserving the life foundations forged over centuries. Contemporary viewers saw in Raseya not only the social typology of peasants during a time of upheaval, but also "the natural, pre-Christian roots of the Russian soul," that form of national consciousness whose closeness to nature "makes personal existence difficult and strange," as philosopher Georgy Fedotov put it.

Grigoriev found the subjects for his works in the remote corners of the Petrograd and Olonets provinces, where ancient traditions still survived and the air was steeped in the poetry of patriarchal antiquity. The pictorial compositions of Raseya grew out of portrait and genre sketches drawn from life, which in the process of working on canvas were generalized, typified, and purified of accidental detail. In Toilers of the Fields, Grigoriev adopts a compositional device rooted in icon-painting tradition: he enlarges the peasants' heads, placing them at the center of the canvas against a sketchily rendered landscape background. The ochre-toned faces of the figures and the wrinkled hands of the old woman, furrowed like plowed earth, evoke the cracked surface of the soil itself.

Old people and children always occupy a special place in the cycle-as the two age poles of human existence. Peasant girls and youths gaze at the surrounding world with curiosity, while the old woman embodies the spiritual memory of the people and the patriarchal antiquity of Russia. All possess timeless, universal features; behind their outward calm and stern self-containment lies the essence of their material being.

Toilers of the Fields

In the composition Toilers of the Fields, Grigoriev unites earlier pictorial and graphic motifs-such as The Old Milkmaid (1917, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)-and a series of pencil drawings (he was long renowned as a brilliant draftsman, "a magician of line").

Toilers of the Fields was probably executed by Grigoriev in 1920 in Berlin, where he worked during the summer at his wife's relatives' dacha, continuing the Raseya cycle. The artist made active use of the brownish tone of the cardboard support, letting it show through the paint layer-or leaving it untouched-as an additional color element in the overall palette. The composition is built on combinations of ochre hues with accents of his favorite crimson and blue. The work is characteristic of this period for its light "cubist" treatment of the old woman's face, which lends sharpness to the generalized forms of the peasant models. The concrete image takes on timeless and symbolic overtones through the spherical perception of space. Curving forms and lines create a sense of the enclosed hemisphere of the earth, against which the peasant woman's head appears powerful and monumental. The realistic authenticity of the figures, and their touch of grotesque exaggeration, are transformed on the canvas into the generalized and universal realm of the peasant world.

Arriving in Berlin in October 1919 among the first wave of Russian artists, Grigoriev took part in the 37th Berlin Secession exhibition as early as November, having been elected a permanent member. Like Marc Chagall somewhat later, he was among those who succeeded in capturing the attention of the Berlin public and critics. The several months he spent in Berlin formed a distinct and important stage in his artistic biography.

The painting was not only reproduced in both German editions of the Raseya series, but was also exhibited in 1923 at several major Boris Grigoriev exhibitions in the United States: Exhibition of Painting and Drawings by Boris Grigoriev, Worcester Art Museum, January 2-14, 1923; Exhibition of Russian Painting and Sculpture, Brooklyn Museum, New York, January 23-February 28, 1923; and Paintings and Drawings by Boris Grigoriev, The New Gallery, New York, April 6-28, 1923.

1923 proved a successful year for Grigoriev-seven paintings and ten drawings were sold through The New Gallery, the highest sales figures among artists represented by that gallery. The painting was exhibited one last time at GRD Studio in New York in 1928 before disappearing from public view.

Heritage Auctions is grateful to Dr. Tamara Alexandrovna Galeeva for her research and note on this lot


Estimate: $300,000 - $500,000.

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