Lot 45: LEONID IVANOVICH SOLOMATKIN

LEONID IVANOVICH SOLOMATKIN 1837-1883 ENTERTAINING THE OFFICIAL signed in Cyrillic l.l. oil on panel 24 by 31cm, 9 1/2 by 12 1/4 in.

The Ramsay Collection, Helsinki
Thence by descent to the previous owner

Entertaining the Official is known to have been in the collection of the Ramsay family at their manor in Tali, west of Helsinki, which they bought in 1837. The painting may have been acquired by General Major Anders Edvard Ramsay (1799-1877), a high ranking general in the Russian army of Russian and Scottish ancestry who was ennobled in 1856. Once the estate was sold in 1932, the painting was kept in the private collection of a descendant in Oslo.

This wry depiction of the urban lower class is a classic subject for Solomatkin, who typically chose everyday, intimate subjects, gently exaggerating some of the more grotesque aspects of the petite-bourgeoisie. The theatrical composition of Entertaining the Official is a device he often employed, perhaps to diminish the importance of his subjects on their own stage and emphasize the poshlost' or self-satisfied vulgarity of the scene before the viewer. Upheavals in the social order in Russia in the late 19υth century provided material for all the arts, and Solomatkin's distinctive strand of satirical realism is a fascinating contribution to the discourse. He was particularly influenced by 17υth century Dutch genre painting, for example the work of Jan Steen (1625-1679) in the Hermitage, as well as popular graphic art of contemporary magazines.

Solomatkin famously repeated his most successful compositions. Several versions of the present composition are recorded: the earliest known example painted in 1872 once hung in the Russian Museum, but was on exhibition in Nalchik when the Second World War broke out and subsequently went missing; an 1880 version is held in the Tula Art Gallery and a third, undated, is in the Sevastopol Art Gallery. The present work is thought to have been painted in the 1870s or 1880s.

We are grateful to Elena Nesterova of the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, for providing additional cataloguing information.