Lot 531: Eduard Hau (1807-1887)

Eduard Hau (1807-1887)
Portrait of Favst Petrovich Makerovsky and his dog
signed 'E. Hau' (lower right)
pencil and watercolour, heightened with white, on paper
6 x 7 5/8 in. (15.9 x 19.3 cm.)
Executed circa 1840

Moscow, Museum of Private Collections, Pushkin's Contemporaries: 100 Portraits in Watercolour from a Parisian Collection, May - July 1999.

M. Baruch & I. Sakharova, Russian Portraits in Watercolour, 1825-1855, Paris, 1994, pp. 97 and 98, illustrated.
O. N. Rusina, 'Favst Petrovich Makerovskii', The Moscow Journal, 2000, no. 2, Moscow, pp. 27-30, illustrated p. 29.

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
Where previously this pictured was entitled simply 'Portrait of a hunter with his dog', academic Olga Rusina suggests that 'It is possible to confidently assert that the hunter is F. P. Makerovsky' (1780-1847), a Polish nobleman who was painted aged nine by Dmitry Levitsky (1735-1822). Rusina substantiates her proposed identification by pointing out the subjects' shared 'round face, wide smooth forehead, thin dark straight hair, large light grey wide-set eyes beneath arched eyebrows; both have a straight mouth and identical shaped chins.' Her suggestion that both Hau and Levitsky have employed tactics to detract attention from Favst Petrovich Makerovsky's short stature: the child's short torso is adorned with a large sash while the adult Makerovsky holds a beret to shield his leg, is somewhat undermined by Hau's decision to paint the hunter standing immediately in front of a dog which only serves to emphasise the man's height or lack thereof. Makerovsky was the son of P. M. Nesterov, a friend to many artists who commissioned Livitsky to paint the illegitimate son of whom he was extremely fond. Many Nesterovs were distinguished by their notably short necks, a point not undetected by Rusina who directs our gaze to the almost absent neck of Hau's hunter. Makervosky was much loved by his friends and his adoring wife, Sofya Sergeevna Mosolova, with whom he was buried at the Andronikov Monastery in Moscow after his death on 28 February 1847.