Vasily Vereschagin (Russian, 1835-1904). Bhutanese woman. Oil on panel. 8-7/8 x 6-3/8 inches (22.5 x 16.2 cm). Artist's ...

Description

Vasily Vereschagin (Russian, 1835-1904)
Bhutanese woman
Oil on panel
8-7/8 x 6-3/8 inches (22.5 x 16.2 cm)
Artist's collection/American Art Association stamp on the reverse

PROVENANCE:
The artist;
His sale: American Art Association, New York, November 17, 1891, lot 53;
Mr. Clement A. Griscom, Esq. (1841-1912), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, probably acquired from the above;
His wife, Mrs. Clement A. Griscom, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, inherited from the above, 1912;
Thence by descent;
Robert Lindsay Fine Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
Private collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
Shannon's Fine Art Auctioneers, Milford, Connecticut, October 27, 2022, lot 15 (as Portrait of a North Russian Tribe Member);
Private collection, acquired from the above.

EXHIBITED:
American Art Association, New York, "Exhibition of the Works of Vasili Verestchagin," 1888, no. 67.

LITERATURE:
American Art Association, Exhibition of the Works of Vasili Verestchagin, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1888, p. 46, no. 67, not illustrated.

This sensitive, vibrant portrait of a Bhutanese woman was one of a large number of paintings by Russian artist Vasily Vereschagin sent to tour America. In 1888, James Sutton and Thomas Kirby of the American Art Association invited the artist to exhibit in New York. In October, 59 cases of paintings, many informed by Vereschagin's travels to Central Asia, India, and Palestine, among other locales, along with "souvenir" objects, were sent to launch a blockbuster exhibition, following an earlier acclaimed European tour. Vereschagin soon became a celebrity, followed by press who reported on his artwork and his movements through New York society. Both Vereschagin and his art, like Bhutanese woman, were seen as exotic visions of the East, a quality the savvy artist capitalized on. The exhibition included 107 paintings, 24 photographs of works not sent for the show, six sets of sketches, and many applied Russian and decorative arts collected from the artist's travels (Molly Brunson, "The Most Theatrical Entertainment in New York," Vereschagin and the Exhibition of Russian Art in America, 2018, tretyakovgallerymagazine.com). The Evening Star's critic called the exhibition "the most theatrical entertainment.... To step out of the daylight and rattle and busy jostling of 23rd street into the subdued artificial light, the bizarre arrangements of strange effects and the musky odors of the building containing the celebrated paintings is like stepping into another world, so strange is the interior... gallery in its contrast with the scenes one has just left outside" ("New York Notes," The Evening Star, November 24, 1888, p. 6, as quoted in Brunson).

Given its popularity in New York, the exhibition travelled to Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. While it was not the artist's original intention in touring America, the collection was sold at an American Art Association auction in November 1891, with many of the works disappearing into the collections of wealthy Gilded Age Americans. One such collector was Clement A. Griscom (1841-1912), a Philadelphia shipping magnate and financier who probably acquired the present work and Vereschagin's landscape, Kanchinjinga, Pandim and other Mountains in the Clouds, from the sale. By 1888, Griscom was president of the International Navigation Co. and a key figure in American transatlantic shipping; by 1901 he was a millionaire, and used his resources to amass a vast art collection, much of which was displayed in the two-story art gallery at "Dolobran," his expansive country house in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The posthumous sale of Griscom's collection included masterworks by diverse artists such as Canaletto, Rembrandt, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, and Kanchinjinga, Pandim and other Mountains in the Clouds. Bhutanse woman was kept in the family collection, passing to Griscom's wife, Frances, once painted by American Impressionist Cecillia Beaux.




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