YUON, KONSTANTIN (1875-1958) On the Volga signed Watercolour, heightened with white, and pencil on paper, laid on board, 51.5 by 69.5 cm. Provenance: Acquired by the grandfather of the present owner before 1924. Private collection, UK. Authenticity has been confirmed by Vladimir Petrov. One of the most optimistic Russian artists of the early XX century, Konstantin Yuon was captivated by the theme of the Volga from his early youth. He first embarked on a journey along the Volga in the search for inspiration for his work immediately after graduating from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Later, he often travelled upstream, stopping at various towns on the upper reaches of the Volga, where he was attracted by the well preserved provincial way of life, “the wonderful bright colours of the painted cottages” and the beautiful landscapes of the river banks. The painting On the Volga presented here for auction belongs to a cycle of gouaches and watercolours influenced by the impressions of his journey to Nizhny Novgorod in 1911. The trip was very productive for the artist, and a series of Novgorod views and Volga landscapes soon appeared. The artist's attention was particularly drawn to the market places, jetties and bridges, bustling and full of life, where the Volga was a continuation of urban space, and its banks seethed with the busy daily life of the river port. The artist absorbed the breadth, the openness and the scale of the region around Nizhny Novgorod, and many of his landscapes from this series — Volga Jetties in Nizhny Novgorod (1911), Samolet Jetty on the Volga (1911), Jetty on the Volga (1912, Serpukhovsky Museum), Sunset on the Volga. Nizhny Novgorod (1911, Nizhegorod State Museum of Art) — have the appearance of vast panoramas. To capture the expanses of the Volga as fully as possible, Yuon selects a high viewpoint for the landscape, taking in the river bank in a single view, with its great bustle of people and carts, steam boats ready to leave with crowds of impatient passengers, the smooth blue waters of the river flashing in the sun, and the town visible in the distance. “I wanted to paint these pictures like songs”, the artist recalled. On the Volga is one of these Volga panoramas, so full of life. Before us is a view of the river bank, a jetty, the Volga, and a summer sky covered with grey rain clouds. The water of the river is of a dense leaden colour, and this motionless smooth surface, passing away around a bend, is visible for a long distance, right to the line of horizon. But the river, the sky and the opposite bank of the river clustered with buildings are only the background against which the pictorial narrative of an ordinary day on a Volga jetty unfolds. The picture is full of heavy barges, drivers, people and carts waiting for cargo. Hauliers bustle along a high gangway, and carts move incessantly in every direction. The jetty seems chaotic at first, but all this busy, colourful, intense life of the river bank has its own long established order. Yuon tries to combine careful attention to detail with skill in creating the general mood of the picture, a unified artistic image. Nevertheless, many details slip from our view: the jetty, the landing stage and moored river vessels of all colours are painted in broad, general outlines. The picture is dominated by the artist's original and optimistic treatment of the landscape, conveyed through the fine haze enveloping and drawing together all objects, all the people and the animals. And although the sky above the water is almost entirely covered by rain clouds, the bright rays of the sun still shine on the river bank and the wooden sides of the barges. The rich, thick brushstrokes of shadows thrown by the sun are juxtaposed with the mottled colours of the sandy river bank. The panoramic composition saturated with air and light, and the cheerful colours imbue the work with a sense of the affirmation of life. All of Yuon's later works on the theme of the Volga are associated with this broad sense of the distinctive beauty of the Russian river landscape. The artist feels acutely the special poetry in the life of a big shipping river and cherishes its local colour. He loves to immerse himself in the bustle of its jetties, to depict the busy ports and wharves with bright red cottages on the banks, the brightly coloured flags on the high masts and the smoke of the steam boats above the blue river. One commentator aptly wrote: “Perhaps only in the lively landscapes of the old Dutch and Flemish masters do we find the same boldness with which Yuon captures life and the same complete lack of sentimentality”.