PETR GELLER (RUSSIAN 1862-1933)

PETR GELLER (RUSSIAN 1862-1933)
The Tsar Ivan IV and the Hermit Nicholas Salos (Episode of the Expedition of the Tsar Ivan, the Terrible, to Pskoff), 1894
oil on canvas
206 x 150 cm (81 1/8 x 59 in.)
signed lower right

PROVENANCE
Collection of Frank C. Havens (purchased at public auction in February, 1912)
Collection of M.H. de Young (aqcuired from the above collection at auction in 1916)
Gifted by the above to the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, 1918 (item 43628)

EXHIBITED
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904 (no. 60 in the catalogue of the Russian section)

LITERATURE
Catalogue of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904, p. 12, no. 60
"Masterpieces of Russian Art in America," Current Literature Vol. XXXIX, no. 6 (1905): 626-628 (the present lot illustrated on p. 627)
Robert C. Williams, "America's Lost Russian Paintings: Frank C. Havens and the Russian Collection of the 1904 St. Louis Exposition", The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 7, no. 1 (1980): 1-27

LOT NOTES
The present lot is by a prominent Russian artist Petr Isaakovich Geller, who studied at Odessa Painting School and graduated the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1883. Soon after his graduation, Geller conferred a degree of a first class artist for his painting Ivan the Terrible's Deathbed Conversion executed in 1886. Just a year later, in 1887, the artist�s first freestyle work Jewish Recruits Taking the Enlistment Oath was acquired by the Imperial Academy of Arts Museum. From that point Geller begins exhibiting his history and genre paintings yearly. The Tsar Ivan IV and the Hermit Nicholas Salos being offered in this auction was created by the artist in 1894 and is among Geller�s largest and most famous works. It depicts an episode of Ivan the Terrible�s expedition to Pskov in 1570. Having grown suspicious of the loyalty of the citizens of Novgorod and Pskov, Ivan the Terrible set out with his troops to these cities with a devastating campaign. As the Pskov Chronicler relates, the Tsar came... with great fierceness, like a roaring lion, to tear apart innocent people and to shed much blood. But when the Tsar entered the city, his wrath was considerably appeased by the attitude of Pskov inhabitants - each family knelt at the gate of their house, bearing the customary Russian symbols of welcome, bread and salt, to meet the Tsar.

As legend has it, the Tsar put up at the Monastery of Pskov and there visited the hermit Nicholas, surnamed �Salos�. Instead of presenting the Tsar with bread and salt, the hermit approached Ivan with a threat of divine punishment, cursed at him and, most memorably, offered the Tsar a piece of raw meat. When Ivan voiced his disgust, stating that he doesn�t eat flesh during Lent, Nicholas allegedly retorted that the Tsar did a far worse thing in devouring the flesh of Christians. Startled by the encounter, Ivan the Terrible did not touch Pskov, left the people in peace, and instead returned to Moscow.

This subject has been illustrated by many Russian artists, including Andrei Ryabushkin and Ivan Pelevin. Almost an identical but smaller copy of the present lot created two years later by Grigory Myasoedov in 1899, is currently in the collection of the Memorial Estate-Museum of N.A. Yaroshenko in Kislovodsk.

The present lot was exhibited at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904. Due to Russo-Japanese War, Russia had officially withdrawn from St. Louis, but Edward Grunwaldt, a Russian fur merchant, councilor of the Commerce for the Ministry of Finance and member of the Russian Aid Organization Committee for the Exposition, was allowed to continue its program as a private individual. He subsequently arranged contracts with each of the contributing artists in which he guaranteed that he would either sell their wares or return them at his expense. The collection arrived to St. Louis piecemeal and late and had to be housed on the second floor of the Central Arts Palace. Despite the exhibition being massive and impressive, the Russian paintings did not result in either the anticipated major prizes or big sales. The entire collection was shipped to New York again in 1905, then to Canada by Grunwaldt�s lawyer and ultimately to San Francisco, where an Oakland developer Frank C. Havens bought it at public auction in February, 1912, as an �unclaimed merchandise� from U.S. Customs. However, in 1916 Havens fell into financial distress and had to sell his collection at auction to private buyers. The Tsar Ivan IV and the Hermit Nicholas Salos ended up in the collection of Michael Henry de Young, co-founder of the San Francisco Chronicle, who in 1918 gifted the work to the Fine Arts Building in Golden Gate Park, later renamed into the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.
Today, Geller�s work can be found in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum and other museum as well as private collections around the world.