Lot 513: Nikolai Nikolaevich Sapunov , 1880-1912 Still life with flowers oil on canvas

signed in Cyrillic l.l. oil on canvas

64.5 by 40cm., 25 1/2 by 15 3/4 in.

The famous art critic Nikolai Punin once described Sapunov as 'a dandy, a romantic, an enthusiast of antique vases... It is melancholy nostalgia for a very distinct idea of the olden days that draws him to his blues, pinks and golds' ('Tri khudozhniki', Apollon, 1915, No.8-9, p.11). He is best known for his still lifes in which aged china and dusty crystal vases, lovingly painted, do indeed feel as though they are covered by a patina of antiquity. Sapunov studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Isaac Levitan and worked with Sudeikin as a theatre designer in Moscow, producing some magnificent sets for the Bolshoi Theatre. He was invited to participate in the two famous Symbolist exhibitions at the turn of the century, The Crimson Rose (1904) and The Blue Rose (1907), in which artists presented an ambiguous, twilight world, which combined poetic dreams and references to folklore with reality, sadness and hope. Sapunov drowned at the age of 32 on a tour of the Gulf of Finland with the poet Mikhail Kuzmin. The State Tretyakov Gallery organised a major retrospective of his work in 2003.