Provenance:

Nedra Matteucei Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Richard Freeland, Indiana

Private collection, Texas

 

Nicolai Fechin dabbled in landscapes, still lifes, charcoal drawings and, for at least several paintings, non-objective abstraction. The vast majority of his work, though, was in the area of figurative and portrait paintings. Today, he is considered one of the finest portrait painters in the country, and is frequently cited in the same breath as John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart, Robert Henri and others. The power of his portraits is on display here in Carmencita, showing a young girl in a radiant orange dress, her eyes peering delicately from within his powerful brushwork.

 

Fechin was born in Russia, and moved to New York in 1923 and then Taos, New Mexico, in 1926. The light and people in the high desert had an immediate effect on his studio, which can be seen in nearly every piece created in Northern New Mexico. “The work from Taos is exceptional. The portraits are acutely psychological, compassionate, penetrating studies of character, scrutinizing the soul of man,” writes Mary Balcomb in Nicolai Fechin. “…Fechin's Taos portraits are masterfully executed, timeless. Each is a highly individual study, yet possessing a generalization or universal quality which evokes memories and associations that relate to all people everywhere. In looking at a Fechin portrait people frequently remark, ‘I know him from somewhere.’ It is this subjective quality, too, of the Rembrandts, the Goyas and the Velasquez paintings which after centuries can pose questions or evoke sadness and pleasure within the viewer. We see this characteristic in much of the work Fechin produced, not only in Russia, but as it reached full maturity with the Taos Indian. Much to Fechin’s credit, there was never an exaggerated expression or indication of torment or agony. He restricted himself to ‘depicting a narrow range of emotions,’ and he helped ‘to lift portrait painting out of the status of a mere profession.’”

 

For the last century, Fechin’s portraits have been celebrated by scholars, collectors and curators who all point to different aspects of his work that stands out: the brilliant color, the vulnerability of the subjects’ eyes, the raw application and looseness of the paint on the canvas, and even the poses, which frequently show subjects unguarded and serene with the artist. None of these are wrong, but for Fechin, it often came down to the drawing. “A high degree of expertness in technique (draughtsmanship) always has had and always will have a predominant place in art,” Fechin wrote. “The subject, by itself, has value only according to the mode of the day: tomorrow it will be superseded by a new one. With the passing of time the subject loses much of its meaning, but the fine execution of it retains its value.”