Lot 14: A group of six original illustrations forSlovo o Polku Igoreveeach approximately 61.2 x 40.9cm (24 1/8 x 16 1/8in).

A group of six original illustrations for Slovo o Polku Igoreve comprising of: Deux pleureurs au sommet des tours, Archers, Prisonnières traînées par les cheveaux, La ville, Montagne and Princess Yaroslavna's lament on a wall of a fortress in Putivl (6) four signed in Cyrillic (lower left); one signed in Cyrillic and dated '1928' pencil and gouache on paper each approximately 61.2 x 40.9cm (24 1/8 x 16 1/8in).

61.2 x 40.9cm

Brussels, Palais des beaux-arts de Bruxelles, Exposition d'art Russe ancien et moderne, May-June 1928, under nos. 903 (Montagne), 904 (Prisonnières traînées par les cheveaux), 906 (Archers), 915 (Deux pleureurs au sommet des tours) and 926 (La ville).

Palais des beaux-arts de Bruxelles, Exposition d'art Russe ancien et moderne,exh. cat., 1928, p. 81.

Private collection, New York (probably acquired directly from the artist in Paris, c. 1950.) Thence by descent.

A member of the Mir Iskusstva group, Dmitri Stelletsky sought to reincorporate the artistic heritage of Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Russia into modern Russian art. As a young student, he studied medieval churches and monastic architecture in Northern Russia, advocating for the revival of the Russian artistic tradition as expressed in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century icons, frescoes and illuminated manuscripts. It is in graphic art that Stelletsky most effectively recreated the centuries-old tradition of the illuminated manuscript, as evidenced by his two series of illustrations for the Twelfth Century epic poem, The Tale of Igor's Campaign. The first and smaller of the series, which Stelletsky executed as a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, consisted of gouache illustrations and scriptby the expert calligrapher Ivan Blinov. Stelletsky's contemporaries praised the colourful, stylised illustrations. The artist and critic Alexander Benois, wrote: 'Without a slightest pose, freely and fluidly Stelletsky composed his ornamental refrain; with the most remarkable quality, apart from the beauty of colours and lines, is precisely the freedom, the naturalness and the ingeniousness of the 'weaving' of the image.' Upon the suggestion of Valentin Serov, the works were acquired for the collection of the Tretyakov gallery (Galia Aksenova, Iskusstvo knigi D. S. Stelletskogo, 'Bibliotekovedenie', 2011, no. 1, p. 67). The present six illustrations come from the second series on The Tale, which consisted of approximately sixty gouaches and which Stelletsky executed while in Paris. Unable to return to Russia following the October Revolution, for Stelletsky the present series of illustrations served as an important link to Russian culture. Although the second series does not incorporate calligraphy, it so closely adheres to the text that the illustrations were called 'graphic translations' of The Tale. Sergey Makovsky praised the brightly coloured and stylised illustrations: It is impossible to judge these [works] by their black-and-white reproductions. Here all the 'magic' comes from colour... Each folio is executed in a specific colour palette, and each drawing is dominated by a single hue. These decisions are far from arbitrary—they are suggested by the poetic content itself. Yet I will refrain from discussing the colours of 'The Tale'—to fully perceive their expressiveness and their relationship with the text—one must see them! It is simply impossible to describe the graphics, virtually saturated with colour and symbolism (ibid., p. 68). After the artist's death, the folios were separated and acquired by various private collectors. We are fortunate that the present sale brings a few of these exceptional works to light.