Lot 450: Gavril Pavlovich Kondratenko (Pawlowsk 1854-1924)

Gavril Pavlovich Kondratenko (Pawlowsk 1854-1924) View of Florence from the South with the Campanile, Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore and Palazzo Vecchio, signed in Cyrillic, Oil on canvas, 42,5 x 67,5 cm, framed, (Rei) Gavriil Pawlowitsch Kondratenko: He was a prominent exponent of late 19th and early 20th Century Russian landscape painting. Between 1873-1882 he was a guest student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Art. In 1881 he won the silver medal at the Academy and in 1884 held his first exhibition in St. Petersburg. From 1910 he was a member of the Kouindji Society of Landscape Painters. Between 1880-1914 he travelled around Southern Russia, the Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus as well as Italy and Greece. In the 1880s Kondratenko dedicated a series of landscapes to the great Russian poet Lermontov; Russian literature, culture and history played an important role in his work. The "View of Florence from the South" represents Florence not as a tourist destination, but the romantic city to whom generati ns of Russian poets dedicated their lines, such as N. V. Gogol, A. A. Blok; the painting has an elevated, ethereal quality to it. The panoramic composition, as well as the high visual focus, is typical of Kondratenko. The quality of the paintwork places the picture within the best period of this artist's productivity, and is at the latest an early 20th Century work. Kondratenko's works can be found in the Tretjakow Gallery in Moscow, in the St. Petersburg State Museum as well as in other museums in Russia and the Ukraine. The "View of Florence from the South" has been in the collection of the current owner since the late 1960s.