Lot 0025
VLADIMIR BEKLEMISHEV (1861–1920), FEMALE BUST
Estimate: 7000-9000€
A Russian Female Bust from the Composition How Beautiful, How Fresh Were the Roses… VLADIMIR BEKLEMISHEV (1861-1920)
Bronze, cast and patinated; mounted on a shaped square base. Height with a stand: 24 cm.
After the model by Vladimir Beklemishev, late 19th to early 20th century.
Signed in Cyrillic on the reverse: V. Beklemishev.
A sensitively modeled bronze bust of a young woman, shown with her head slightly inclined and her gaze lifted in an expression of quiet reverie. Her softly parted lips and wide, luminous eyes lend the figure an inward, emotional presence, while the loose treatment of the hair, gathered at the nape, and the falling drapery across one shoulder reinforce the intimate, lyrical character of the image. The low neckline of her dress, edged with a ruffled border, introduces a note of informal naturalism that is characteristic of late Russian academic sculpture when it turns toward genre sentiment.
The bust derives from Vladimir Beklemishev’s famouse composition How Beautiful, How Fresh Were the Roses…, a work associated with the melancholy poetic line popularized by Ivan Turgenev in his prose poem of the same title. The phrase, itself originating in the poem Roses by Ivan Myatlev, became in Russian culture a symbol of tender remembrance and sorrow for vanished youth, beauty, and happiness. Beklemishev translated this literary theme into sculpture with particular refinement, creating a female image poised between portrait, allegory, and emotional genre scene. Beklemishev studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg from 1878 to 1887 under N. A. Laveretsky and A. R. von Bock, receiving numerous academic distinctions, culminating in the Grand Gold Medal in 1887 for The Entombment. That same year he was awarded the title of Class Artist of the First Degree, briefly taught at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, and was then sent abroad as an Academy pensioner. In 1892 he became adjunct professor and was elected Academician for works including The Fugitive Slave and Christian Woman of the Early Centuries.
From 1894 he served as professor and head of the sculpture studio at the Higher Art School of the Imperial Academy, and was rector in 1900-1903 and 1906-1911. Among his pupils were A. S. Golubkina, S. T. Konenkov, M. G. Manizer, and L. V. Sherwood. One of the most sought-after Russian sculptors of his day, Beklemishev also served in 1917 as commissioner for the protection of monuments of antiquity and art in Petrograd.
Starting price: 6000€
Estimate: 7000-9000€
Hammer Price: €
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