Peasants, oil painting by Zinaida Serebriakova, 1914
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Lanceray was born in 1884 on the Neskuchnoye estate near what is now Kharkiv, Ukraine. A member of the artistic Benois family, her grandfather was a famous architect, an uncle a famous painter, her father, Yevgeny Nikolayevich Lanceray, was a well-known sculptor, and one brother was an architect, the other brother was a master of monumental painting and graphic art.
After Zinaida graduated from the equivalent of a high school she entered an art school where she studied under the Russian realist painter, Ilya Yefimovich Repin, in 1901 and under another Russian realist, the portrait artist, Osip Braz, between 1903 and 1905. She also studied art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris from 1905 to 1906. In 1905 she married her first cousin, Boris Serebriakov. They had four children, two girls and two boys.
Public recognition of her works came in 1909/1910 when a self-portrait, titled “At the Dressing Table,” was one among those featured at a large exhibition mounted by the Union of Russian Artists in 1910. The painting on the card was one in a series of works with the theme of peasants and the Russian countryside completed between 1914 and 1917 when she was considered to be in her prime as an artist.
The October 1917 Revolution brought a huge change to her life. The family estate was plundered and all the family reserves gone. She and her family suffered from hunger and she had to give up oil painting for less expensive techniques such as charcoal and pencil. In 1919 her husband died of typhus contracted while he was imprisoned in Bolshevik jails in Siberia. She moved to her grandfather’s private apartment in Petrograd. Then due to the results of the Revolution was forced to share the accommodations. Fortunately she was quartered with artists from the Moscow Art Theater. During that time her artwork focused on theater life including ballet. About the same time her daughter, Tatiana, entered the academy of ballet. In 1924 Zinaida moved to Paris was commissioned to work on a large decorative mural. Her children remained with her mother in Russia. Once the mural was completed she intended to return to Russia but was unable to do so. She was able to send for her two younger children but could not do so for the two older children who remained in Russia. It was many years before they saw each other again.
Fascinated by landscapes and people, Zinaida traveled a great deal. She also experienced poverty for most of the rest of her life. She became a French citizen in 1947 and was able to see her older children 36 years after their forced separation. In 1966 she finally had an exhibition of her works in the Soviet Union in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. Although many of her works were shown in the Soviet Union most remain in France. She died in 1967 and is buried in the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, Paris, France. Today her paintings are worth much more than when she was alive.
Every once and awhile I am drawn to postcards with artwork. This one was in a jumble of cards stuffed in a shoe-box at an antique mall. The bright colors and the peasants having a simple meal, appealed to me. It was fun to find out something about the artist and her life too.
For additional information, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinaida_Serebriakova
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Repin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osip_Braz
https://moscsp.ru/en/biografiya-zinaidy-evgenevny-serebryakovoi-hudozhnik-zinaida.html
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