235 Lady in Black

SOLD
Winning Bid Undisclosed
This item SOLD at 2015 Apr 11 @ 15:04UTC-7 : PDT/MST
Category Western Americana
Auction Currency USD
Start Price NA
Estimated at 175,000.00 - 275,000.00 USD
Lady in Black
Artist: Fechin, NicolaiDate of Birth: 1881-1955
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 24 x 20 inches
Signed: Signed lower right

Just who is this mysterious Lady in Black with her silent screen goddess eyes and Betty Boop mouth? With her long fingers and the hint of crimson on her nails, her pose might be languid, but everything in the room seems to swirl around her eyes. No nonsense here. ÒReally?Ó she seems to say in this moment, the moment before she looks away, dismissing you as insignificant. Fechin, like few others, could do this, catch an essence in an instant, tell a story with a portrait. Nicolai Fechin was born in the rugged Tartar forest in Czarist Russia. His father was a noted woodcarver and maker of icons. At 13, Fechin began his training at the Art School of Kazan. He would later study in St. Petersburg, where his talent would earn him a six-year scholarship to the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. It was in Pittsburgh that he began to put techniques of Impressionism into practice, dividing colors and working with a palette knife. His work came to the attention of prominent American institutions and collectors; these connections helped him elude the hardest of the many hardships of the Bolshevik Revolution after he returned to the new Soviet Union. In 1923, Fechin and his wife left the U.S.S.R. and moved to New York. Three years later, Fechin developed tuberculosis, and a doctor suggested he move to the Southwest for his health. One of FechinÕs friends, the artist John Young-Hunter, suggested he try Taos. Fechin did, and he found the countryside healthful and reminiscent of the Tartar and Siberian woods and mountains of his youth. As well, the Taos Indians seemed to him to be kindred spirits to the people he had grown up among. In the world of Western Art, we may know him best for his sensitive paintings of the landscape and people of the American Southwest, but portraits like Lady in Black, and the stories they inspire us to invent, are what made Nicolai FechinÕs name and fame.