VERA MIKHAILOVNA ERMOLAEVA Suprematist Design For A Façade, 1920 (Lot 65) Gouache and pencil on paper Estimate: £30,000-50,000 Ermolaeva executed Suprematist Design for a Façade in the spring of 1920 as part of a comprehensive municipal programme to decorate the streets of Vitebsk for the 1st of May celebrations. A year earlier Ermolaeva had been sent to Vitebsk by the People’s Commissariat of Education to head up the painting studio at the People’s School of Art where she proved a dependable assistant to Marc Chagall. 

Hanae Rebelo |Hanae.Rebelo@sothebys.com| (0)20 7293 5165 The arrival of Kazimir Malevich in Vitebsk in November 1919 had a tremendous impact on Ermolaeva. Finding herself in the company of the founding father of the non-objective movement it was not long before she followed the lead of the great Russian avant-garde artist and became an ardent adherent of Suprematism. The present work is by far the most important of Ermolaeva’s Suprematist pieces to have survived. A smaller version of the work is at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

PETR IOSIFOVICH SMUKROVICH Toilette, 1913 Oil on canvas Estimate: £200,000-300,000 The most important recorded work by Petr Smukrovich, this sumptuous large-scale painting drew the attention of critics at the 1913 graduation show of the Imperial Academy of Arts with the Apollon reviewer singling it out as the most accomplished work that year and praising its technical virtuosity. While Smukrovich’s noble family roots were to become problematic for his advancement as an artist under Bolshevik rule, Toilette was painted at a time when the artist was free to hark back to the era evoked by Konstantin Makovsky’s genre scenes, delighting in rich materials, exploring the time-honoured servant mistress motif and creating a Russified version of Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863).

VASILY IVANOVICH SHUKHAEV Russian Landscape, 1922 (Lot 60) Oil on canvas laid on board Estimate: £250,000-350,000 Despite the title given by the artist, the present work is closely related to Shukhaev’s series of Finnish landscapes and was completed in Paris in 1922. Shukhaev had arrived in France early the previous year. Although Shukhaev’s Finnish period was short, the ten months he spent there in 1920 were very productive and expanded his horizons. The artist produced dozens of works while in Finland, including views of the village of Mustamyaki, where he stayed on the estate of Pauline Linde, the mother of the actress Anna Geinz, who had been a friend of Shukhaev and Yakovlev in St Petersburg.

ALEXANDER EVGENIEVICH YAKOVLEV Harlequin, 1922 (Lot 61) Sanguine and charcoal on paper laid on canvas Estimate: £150,000-200,000 Theatre was a major theme in Alexander Yakovlev’s work throughout his career. Arriving in Paris in 1919 after an extended stay in East Asia, he brought with him countless drawings and paintings inspired by Japanese Kabuki and Chinese theatre. He published a volume on Chinese theatre in 1922, the same year he executed the present work. European theatrical traditions, particularly the Commedia dell’arte, also left their mark on Yakovlev’s work. A famous double self-portrait from 1914, created with the artist’s close friend Shukhaev and depicting themselves as Pierrot and Harlequin is now at the State Russian State Museum in St Petersburg. 

Hanae Rebelo |Hanae.Rebelo@sothebys.com| (0)20 7293 5165 RUSSIAN WORKS OF ART, FABERGÉ & ICONS SALE A rare and important Imperial Silver-Gilt and Enamel Triptych Icon of the Feodorovskaya Mother of God, Savelev Brothers, Kostroma, 1894 (Lot 458) Estimate: £80,000 - 120,000 This spectacular presentation icon was gifted to the last Emperor, Nicholas II, on the occasion of his wedding to Alix of Hesse in 1894. Wedding gifts were sent to the royal couple from throughout the Empire and abroad, many from municipal governments. This triptych icon was presented by the city of Kostroma – a city in Western Russia where Michael I of Russia became the first Russian Tsar of the House of Romanov, and therefore commonly considered the birthplace of the Romanov dynasty. When Michael I had left for Moscow to be crowned, he had taken with him a copy of the Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God, a gift from his mother. The icon thus became the patron icon of the family with the Kostroma officials choosing it as the subject of their extraordinary gift.

A pair of Fabergé jewelled gold, enamel and hardstone cufflinks, workmaster Henrik Wigström, St Petersburg, 1908-1917 (Lot 329) Estimate: £12,000 – 18,000 During the years 1908-1917, four of Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna's nephews and three of her grandnephews were made Knights of the Danish Order of the Elephant. Also knighted was her late husband's first cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich (1909). It is suggested here that either the Dowager or her son, Emperor Nicholas II, may have commissioned these cufflinks from Fabergé as a gift to a newly knighted relative, or perhaps for Count Vladimir Frederiks, the Emperor's Imperial Household Minister, who was knighted in 1909.