Lot 40: Gregory Pavlovich Maltzeff (Russian, 1881-1953) Portrait of the artist's daughter, Marfa Grigorivna Maltseva

Portrait of the artist's daughter, Marfa Grigorivna Maltseva
signed in Latin (lower right)
oil on board
62.7 x 54.5cm (24 11/16 x 21 7/16in).

PROVENANCE:
Family of the artist, Italy

Gregory Pavlovich Maltzeff was born in Talashmanovo, Nizhegorodskaya Oblast' in November, 1881. Primarily an émigré artist, Maltzeff completed his artistic education in Russia as a graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts, there a student of Ilya Repin. Awarded the Academy's prize to study abroad in Italy, where he found himself in the thick of the Great War, Maltzeff was commissioned to design the Russian Catholic church of St. Antony in Rome, painting the iconostas and a number of icons. Many other such commissions were to follow, as the artist's reputation spread in Italy.

Maltzeff settled in Italy with his wife-to-be and later converted to Catholicism, but his body of work illustrates a deep communion with the history of his motherland and its iconography.