Lot 32: Mikhail Filipovich Ivanov , Russian 1869-1930 Beloved Site. A Folk Painting oil on canvas

signed and titled in Cyrillic (lower left); labeled 20 (on the stretcher) oil on canvas

measurements 71 by 110 in. alternate measurements 180.5 by 279.5 cm

St. Louis, Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair), 1904

Collection of Dr. Porter (personal physician to Jack London)
Oakland Art Museum, Oakland
Sale: Sotheby's Los Angeles, June 15, 1975, lot 47

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, CALIFORNIA
For Americans, the twentieth century began the grand spectacle of the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition--or The World's Fair of 1904--held simultaneously with the 1904 Olympics, the first held in the United States. More than 20 million people attended the fair, an average of more than 100,000 each day. The largest of all world fairs before or since, it covered an immense space of 1,272 acres. Visitors saw exhibits ranging from a cow made entirely of butter to the latest technological and scientific advances; many nations sent displays, Scott Joplin wrote the music, and ice cream cones were invented for the occasion.

This event was to host the largest collection of Russian art ever sent abroad for exhibition; almost six hundred paintings, including works by Repin, Vereshchagin, Makovsky and Roerich, intending to introduce highlights of Russian art history to an international public. But the fate of these pictures became uncertain when Russian government participation in the fair was withdrawn after the outbreak of war with Japan. The paintings had already arrived in St. Louis, and there they fell into the hands of a fur merchant and counselor of the Russian Ministry of Finance, Edward Grunwaldt, who at his own expense and in the hope of future profit undertook to oversee their exhibition and subsequent sale or return to Russia. From then on the paintings embarked on a long and bizarre journey to oblivion, involving fraud, unpaid custom's duty, court cases, bankruptcy and seizure. Many ended up in American museums; Roerich, arriving in America as an émigré in the 1920s, was amazed to see that a number of his pictures were on display in the Oakland Museum of Fine Art. Repin declared that he would never again send a picture to America.

For a full account of this remarkable story see Robert C. Williams, Russian Art and American Money, 1900-1940, Harvard University Press, 1980. The fate of the majority of the paintings is still unclear; some of them have been tracked down, while others, as witnessed by the offered lot, unexpectedly materialize from American collections. There were originally three labels affixed to the reverse of this painting, two from the Oakland Art Museum (which deaccessioned the paintings in 1975) and one from United States Customs. When acquired by the Oakland Art Museum, this painting was incorrectly attributed to the artist N.A. Kosheleff and titled The Shepherdess, but additional research has allowed for a correct reattribution--to M.F. Ivanov, who signed the work at lower left.