LONDON.- An early work by Mikhail Larionov, a major force in early 20th century Russian art, is to be auctioned at Bonhams. His 1909 work, Still life with fish and flowers, is estimated at £80,000-100,000, and will feature in Bonhams’ Russian sale in London on 8 June.

Known as the ‘finest Russian impressionist’, Larionov in fact developed past impressionism into an entirely new realm of abstract painting. Still life with fish and flowers defines an important transformative moment in Larionov’s oeuvre and Russian painting as a whole. The work reconciles the influences of European modernism with Russian motifs and painterly traditions.

Daria Chernenko, head of the Russian art department at Bonhams, said, ‘this is a rare and magnificent early Larionov. Paintings of this level and period rarely appear on the market and it will no doubt appeal to both Russian and international collectors, scholars, and cultural institutions.’

Larionov, along with his partner, the celebrated artist Natalia Goncharova, led the charge of the Russian avant garde movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, forming the Jack of Diamondsgroup which exhibited artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Aristarkh Lentulov. In 1909, Larionov was greatly influenced by the European avant-garde. Larionov and his contemporaries saw the work of the French cubists and German expressionists all over the Russian press and at the homes of their friend, the renowned collector Sergei Shchukin. Larionov was a well-known eccentric, suspended three times from the Moscow School of Art for his radicalism. He cut a strange figure on the streets of Moscow, shocking the Russian bourgeoisie by walking around in public with hieroglyphs painted all over his face and body. Shortly after this painting was made, Larionov founded the Rayonnist movement. Inspired by elements of Futurism and Cubism, the artist began to tread a third path between Kandinsky’s exploration of abstraction, and Malevich’s constructivism.

But like Malevich, the painting also draws links between the avant-garde and the Russian tradition of iconography. ‘Larionov continuously drew inspiration from Russian Orthodox icon painting and searched for his own concept of ‘the spiritual in art’ as he described it,’ said Chernenko. ‘The fish motif seen in the offered work has its own important course within Larionov’s evolution as an artist.’

Further highlights of the Bonhams Russian Sale on 8 June

The Story Book by 19th century painter Alexei Alexeevich Harlamoff, estimated at £200,000-300,000.
Harlamoff was known for capturing the innocence and beauty of his youthful subjects. Emile Zola described his paintings as ‘straightforward in subject, superlative in execution, and true to beauty… all is simple, there is no meticulous elegance.’ This painting is coming to auction 100 years after it was purchased in Scotland after Harlamoff was featured in the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1888. It has been handed down the generations within the same Scottish family ever since.

Mikhail Alexsandrovich Vrubel’s A tableaux vivant of Dante and Virgil, 1893, estimated at £200,000-300,000.
A towering figure associated with Russian symbolist and art nouveau movements, Mikhail Vrubel executed this painting while he was a member of the Abramstevo artists’ colony, a nineteenth century movement that fostered the revival of Russian folk art and traditional crafts to create works in a neo-Russian style. This painting – a rare discovery – is a reproduction of the enormosly popular tableaux vivants that the Abramstevo staged in Moscow during the late 19th century.

Yuri Pavlovich Annekov, Self-portrait, £50,000-70,000
This magnificent sculpture in bronze by Annekov, a leading figure in Russian modernist portraiture, is the artist’s only known sculpture. Over the course of his life, Annekov made numerous self portraits, and this piece is the only sculptural version he ever executed.