A Soviet porcelain group "The Spanish Dance" Lomonosov State...

A Soviet porcelain group "The Spanish Dance"

Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory, Leningrad, 1952

Depicting the Ballerina Sofia Fedorova in A.K. Glazunov's 'Raimonda,' and after the original 1922 design by Natalia Danko, painted by Varvara Rukavishnikova, stamped blue factory mark and 1 sort in Cyrillic (pervyi sort), inscribed monogram VR (Cyrillic), dated 1952.

H: 8 1/2 in.

PROVENANCE:

Ode to Joy Collection, Connecticut.

Literature
Oda k Radosti/Ode to Joy, p. 110, illus. 70, cat. no. 89; for comparison, see Nosovich and Popova, pp. 372-373.

Note
Sofia Vasylievna Fedorova (1879-1963) was a dancer of the Imperial Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. She graduated from the Bolshoi school in 1899 and joined the company, where she was most admired for her character parts. She worked with Diaghilev's ballet from its foundation in 1909, performing major roles throughout the entire history of the Ballets Russes.
After the revolution, she remained on the stage, and was so popular that sculptor Natalia Danko modeled this portrait figure. Federova fled the Soviet Union the same year the figurine was produced in 1922. It remained a popular model however, and, stripped of the identity of the defected dancer, was known as 'Carmen' or 'The Spanish Dance' and periodically recast during the Soviet period.

Fedorova died abroad in France in 1963. Her obituary read, "She lived quietly between outbursts of consciousness and delirium."