Lot 444: * SHEVCHENKO, ALEXANDER (1883-1948) - Portrait of the Artist's Wife Nadezhda Psishcheva.

* SHEVCHENKO, ALEXANDER (1883-1948)
Portrait of the Artist's Wife Nadezhda Psishcheva.
Pencil and watercolour on paper, 23 by 26 cm.

Executed c. 1908.





Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist's family, Moscow.


Private collection, Europe.







Alexander Shevchenko's two remarkable portraits of his wife in this sale were painted in 1907 and 1908 and clearly represent the creative manner in which the artist was workingfrom the middle of the first decade of the century to the early

1910s. The early Shevchenko is characterised by his commitment to Impressionism, to the use of the effects of light, and to more realistic rendering of his portrait subjects. The pur-

suit of a sculptural form that was new to the painter naturally tended to be subjected to the advancing influence of Cubo-Futurism, which took hold of Russian painting in the 1910s.

Later, Shevchenko's work too was to come under this influence for a few years.Both portraits depict Nadezhda Sergeievna Shevchenko (née

Psishcheva) (1882-1913). As though with a foreboding of her untimely death, the artist painted his first wife's portrait repeatedly, using various materials and techniques, of which the

best examples are the earliest, painted in the years 1904-1908.