"ZICHY, MIKHAIL (1829-1906) Wassail signed Charcoal and chalk on paper, 65.5 by 94 cm. The composition presented here for auction is a typical example of Zichy's favourite subject. A brilliant memory helps the artist to recall and include in the composition actual details of the salon interiors, table settings and furniture. With long, flexible lines of charcoal and chalk, Zichy conveys the complex turns of figures in movement and poses ranging from everyday images to caricature. Even in his erotic scenes, the artist invariably adds an element of humour. In his search for new means to enliven his most popular subjects and give his work a creative character, Zichy resorts to an interesting compositional device. Within the general revelry, he isolates several individual groups and episodes, placing them in different areas on the surface of the sheet, and works meticulously on the settings, clothing and characteristics of the figures. This piquant scene is one of a number of humorous and erotic drawings by Mikhail Zichy. As Zichy was appointed court painter to Alexander II, these erotic scenes ran parallel to his official chronicle of the Imperial family's ceremonial life. An innate draughtsman, a man of great curiosity interested in all forms of visual art, Zichy came to Russia as a teacher of painting to the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna. Despite Zichy's youth, news of the talented Hungarian spread rapidly in the aristocratic circles of St Petersburg, and he found many students. The artist's fame and popularity grew with each year and Zichy soon became an official court artist, holding this post under three Russian emperors. Apart from his service at the Imperial Court, Zichy worked mainly in the media of drawing and watercolours, executing several series of melodramatic scenes from the lives of deceived poor girls and their seducers, numerous bacchanalias and orgies in not overly refined taste, and his famous frivolous dinner parties. Noting Zichy's undoubted talent, his unusual technique and poetic invention, the art connoisseur Nikolai Wrangel wrote that “this ""capricious and wild master was nevertheless an astonishing virtuoso. The last miniaturist in Russia, he spoke with beauty and animation of the people of his time. He exploded like a bright firework, illuminating an art that was dying”."""""""