Lot 44: ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVICH GERASIMOV

1881-1963 NOON, SUMMER RAIN oil on canvas 149.5 by 119.5 cm, 58 3/4 by 47 in.

The family of the artist

A key artist of the Socialist Realist era, Gerasimov was the president of the Academy of Arts of the USSR at the time this work was painted. Although he is better known for his heroic depictions of Stalin and Lenin, he often painted large floral composition, some of which he did not part with, but kept in his studio. The open window of the dacha, the lush verdant landscape and the blooming flowers all stem from Gerasimov’s conviction that ‘art should be educating the Soviet person in the spirit of cheerfulness’ (V.Swanson, Soviet Impressionist Painting, Suffolk: The Antiques' Collectors Club, 2008, p.41). And yet the painting betrays his love of Impressionism through its subtly transgressive air glorifying the freedom of the countryside and the sensuous delights of the fragrant lilacs and the balmy summer rain. It is a bitter-sweet tribute to the dacha, the last refuge of Soviet artists, which provided them with poetic excuses to leave Moscow over the summer: ‘We can meet only in a week’s time. Don’t you know the lilacs are in full blossom?’ (ibid., p.367). Gerasimov painted lilacs many times throughout his life and an earlier variant of this composition, dating from 1939, is in the collection of the State Russian Museum (fig.1).