* GORBATOV, KONSTANTIN 1876-1945 View of a Monastery signed, also further signed, dated 1933, inscribed in Latin and numbered "15" on an old label on the reverse Oil on canvas, 80 by 109.5 cm. Provenance: A gift to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of our Lady of the Sign, New York. Authenticity has been confirmed by the expert V. Petrov. View of a Monastery belongs to the series of views of provincial Russia painted by Konstantin Gorbatov in the first half of the 1930s in his Berlin studio. The snowy Russian winter, the mighty fortress walls, the small shops and the churches - Gorbatov depicts that which was so dear to him in Russia and which remained with him in his years as an émigré. But if the winter monastery paintings of twenty years earlier breathe with the freshness of plein air, the vividness of the principles of Impressionism and the Moscow school of the Union of Russian Artists, this immediacy is missing in the paintings of the 1930s. In terms of its atmosphere View of a Monastery may give a feeling of looking to the past, but stylistically it displays features close to the World of Art and style moderne . The expressiveness of the local colour, the almost stage-like spatial arrangement - all combine to create a composite image, a symbol of a lost Russia of a bygone age.