Lot 24: ISAAK IZRAILEVICH BRODSKY

ISAAK IZRAILEVICH BRODSKY 1883 - 1939 AUTUMN LANDSCAPE signed in Cyrillic and dated 1907 l.l. tempera on paper laid down on board 47.7 by 47.7cm., 18 3/4 by 18 3/4 in.

Acquired by the grandmother of the present owner in the 1930s.

The shimmering landscapes that Isaak Brodsky began to paint in 1907 mark an extraordinary departure from his early work, and were unlike anything the critics had seen before. Lyrical, slightly melancholy, and a mass of clearly defined mosaic-like fragments, they were immediately marked out for special praise by the Academy Committee and exhibited several times over the following year to great critical acclaim, including in the 1908 Exhibition of Southern Russian Artists in Odessa.

'His summer studies first caught my attention at the student exhibition with their bright colours and the liveliness of his brushwork.... Later a series of Brodsky's works at the 1908 Academy exhibition literally bowled me over. These were the mature and highly accomplished works of an experienced artist, but one who was completely new to me. A pupil of Repin, yet nothing of Repin in his work at all. It was a mystery. Where had he acquired this skill? Who had taught him?' (the artist Arkady Rylov quoted in I.Brodsky, Isaak Israilevich Brodsky, 1954, p.34).

The press was equally struck. 'With such distinctive treatment of landscape, Brodsky has already founded his own school of painting and inspiring young artists.' (The Odessa News, 1908, idem p.30), a claim which is borne out by the report that the young Boris Grigoriev was reprimanded by the Academy Committee for imitating Brodsky's work too closely.

These works which propelled Brodsky to the forefront of Russian art were painted while he was still a student, during a highly productive period spent mainly at the Academy dacha in Tver province. In correspondence with one of his tutors, Konstantin Kostandi, Brodsky described how industriously he was working, with some studies 'over two arshins, painted over five or seven sessions and very painterly'. As I.Brodsky comments in her monograph on the artist, these 1907-1908 landscapes were a consummation of all his previous work and a defining moment for his later oeuvre (fig.1). The sharp, confident contrasts of Autumn Landscape are hallmarks of his best works over the next decade. The palette became more restrained, the colour harmonies more thoughtful and he tightened his loose brushwork, transforming it into short strokes of pure colour that lend his paintings a tapestry-like quality.

Yet it was not just his handling of paint that was distinctive; the composition of the present work for example – the truncated close-up view of the trees, and the dacha half-glimped through a lacey web of branches, feels very modern, reminiscent of the work of Peter Doig (fig.2).