PIROSMANI, NIKO (1863-1918) Arsenal Hill at Night c. 1907-1908 Oil on oilcloth, 111 by 88 cm. Provenance: Collection of N. Bayadze, owner of a tavern in Tiflis, until approximately 1920. Collection of Kirill Zdanevich. Acquired from the above by the Soviet Government, probably on the advice of Lily Brik, Moscow. Collection of Louis Aragon, Paris, from 1957. The painting was a gift from the Soviet Union to the poet on his 60th birthday. Private collection, Europe. Literature: T. Tabidze, G. Robakidze, G. Kikodze, K. Zdanevich and K. Chernyavskii, Niko Pirosmanishvili, Tiflis, Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Gruzii, 1926, No. 98. K. Zdanevich, Niko Pirosmani, Moscow, 1964, p. 43, illustrated, also listed in the catalogue of works, p. 113, no. 97. E. Kuznetsov, Niko Pirosmanishvili, Leningrad, Izdatelstvo Aurora, 1984, p. 310, illustrated. We are in Search of Pirosmani, Tbilisi, New Art Union, 2004, illustrated on the cover. Arsenal Hill at Night is one of Pirosmani's most striking and interesting works. It is of finest artistic quality and has the most distinguished provenance, and its history reveals the intricacies of Soviet diplomacy. Painted in 1907/8, the work dates from the period when the painter's artistic gift was at its peak. Today this is almost the only Pirosmani work of such a standard remaining outside museum collections. Its uniqueness is determined to a large extent by the choice of subject, not constrained by the limited framework of tavern-sign still lifes which form the major part of the artist's heritage. The picture presented for auction is one of a particularly small number of landscapes in the work of this Georgian genius. It is one of those special, inspired Pirosmani landscapes in which we do not find images of pure nature. In these paintings, the artist depicts the flow of human life filled with some unknown meaning, invariably infused with the spirit of the city, spread out somewhere nearby or visible from afar. With the lights of Tiflis shining in the darkness of the night, Arsenal Hill presents a romantic spectacle, imbued with an element of mystery. The composition is dominated by the infinite dark blue of the southern moonlit sky, in which the artist's brush picks out the massive shape of a cliff hanging to the left, distant hills with the silhouette of a church barely visible against the sky, yellow dots of windows of little houses whose almost indiscernible shapes are glimpsed on the steep slopes, and the line of the valley shining silver under the moon. In the foreground is a tiny suburban house, with a pitched roof, a single window and with the same yellow light burning, two women passing the night around an open-air fire or resting from their long journey on the cart, and finally, the cart itself and a pair of bullocks unharnessed for the night. Thus, at the interface of urban landscape and genre painting, the artist creates one of the most poetic images of his native land. Kirill Zdanevich was one of the first to discover Pirosmani's art. Inspired by his impressions after seeing Arsenal Hill, he wrote in his diary that the influence of Georgian folk and classical poetry in forming Pirosmani's perception of the world was enormous: “The spirit of poetry is revealed in many of the artist's pictures, especially his night scenes, where a white moon shines in a dark-blue sky, while the almost black silhouettes of trees frame the canvas. Arsenal Hill at Nightis an unforgettable landscape. On a black background of unpainted oilcloth several yellow brushstrokes are applied with a sure hand — and you sense the city, with the sky above it, adorned by the moon and white clouds. Standing before the picture, you almost hear the voice of the poet reading lines from verses on beauty, sadness and hopes”. It is no coincidence that Pirosmani's most romantic picture, A Bandit Stole a Horse, is set in the same landscape — a full moon showing between clouds, the broken line of a steep silvery cliff to the left, the “hills of Georgia”, immortalised by Alexander Pushkin, spread- ing out in the distance, where, appropriately, “night gloom rests”. This landscape, repeatedly painted by Pirosmani, is so palpable and so archetypal for Georgia that it seems painted from nature. However, this sensation is deceptive: it is composed, assembled, recreated from visual impressions retained in the artist's memory. The composition of the picture is the fruit of a creative conceptualisation of nature, a simplification of form and a striving for the utmost degree of expression. The picture is divided along the horizon by the distinct broken line of dark green hills. Near the horizon, the sky — a mixture of ultramarine and white pigments — is almost white, despite it being night-time; while higher up in the sky it is turning into a thick dark blue. This penetrating blue is not echoed by any hint of blue either in the earth or in the black and white figures, nor is the green echoed either in the figures or in the sky. But the picture does not break down into separate fragments: in terms of colour it forms a unified whole. The colouring would seem sparing had the artist not intuitively animated the painting with the harmonious rhythm of the spontaneous yellow brushstrokes and the yellow lights of the houses spread out on the terraces in the middle ground, where the moonlight flooding the valley barely reaches. Horizontal cross-cut- ting of the composition by the rhythmically spaced ridges of the clouds, the scarps of the mountain ridge, the band of moonlight running far down along the valley, and finally the roof line at the very bottom, imparts a sense of monumentality and solemnity. The contemplative equilibrium of his world view, characteristic of many of Pirosmani's paintings, is felt here especially. Like the majority of Pirosmani's works, Arsenal Hill at Night was painted for a specific location, most likely to adorn a wall in the wine cellar of N. Bayadze. According to the recollections of con- temporaries, Bayadze's wine cellar (where he traded his wares “on tap and to go”, as the inscription on one of Pirosmani's paintings says) was decorated with a whole collection of the artist's works: “It was a unique, unforgettable spectacle when visitors came down the steep narrow steps into a shabby, grubby little cellar and suddenly found themselves surrounded by such unusual paintings, so arrest- ing in their the solemnity and power of Pirosmani's talent. Eldorado, a garden in Ortachala, Bayadze's wine cellar in Saburtalo … and many others were permanent exhibitions of the artist's works”. The War, the Revolution and the Chamfort tragedy changed Tiflis beyond recognition. Most of the taverns and pleasure gardens closed, and the publicans headed for the villages to wait “for better times”. Pirosmani died forgotten by everyone, and the artist's vast artistic heritage began to disappear, it would seem, literally before one's very eyes. In the general confusion Bayadze's collection also disappeared. It was found only in 1920 by the poet Kollau Chernyavsky, who was a devoted admirer of Pirosmani's talent and author of the first catalogue of his paintings. Returning home one evening, he passed an isolated house on the outskirts of Saburtalo and stopped in amazement by an open door: inside a wine cellar, lit by a kerosene lamp, he saw Bayadze's famous collection of Pirosmani's paintings, which had disappeared from a railway station basement several years ago. These included works that were to become widely known in the future: Arsenal Hill at Night, Eastern Lamb, Fisherman, Wood Seller and others — twelve in all. Chernyavsky ran immediately to the Zdanevich brothers, who had come to Tiflis to search for surviving canvases of the artist. Bayadze was preparing to leave for the countryside, and that night the three met to discuss where to obtain money to save the pictures. A few days later the paintings were purchased by Kirill Zdanevich and taken away to Moscow. It was probably in Zdanevich's house that Arsenal Hill was first seen by Lily Brik, who was enraptured by Pirosmani's work, ardently promoted his art, and even collected material for a biography of the artist. After the Second World War, at Brik's instigation the Soviet Government bought the painting from Zdanevich as a 60th birthday gift for the French communist poet, Louis Aragon, celebrated in the USSR for his loyalty to the regime and also brother-in-law to the muse of the great futurist poet, Mayakovsky (Aragon was married to Lily Brik's sister, the famous writer Elsa Triolet). The picture was presented as an official gift, but the canvas was in need of restoration, and at a family meeting it was decided to leave the Arsenal Hill in Moscow, where it hung for a long time in the apartment of Brik and her second husband, the literary critic Vasiliy Katanyan.