Description

In this stunning seascape, Ivan Federovich Choultsé has captured the beauty of a glistening Mediterranean coastal scene. This painting depicts the Island of Capri. This was a landscape he returned to time and time again, where he often painted the same vista at different times of day, a technique reminiscent of Claude Monet. Choultsé travelled from Russia to the Mediterranean and painted many such summer scenes. There, he concentrated his efforts on studying the effects of light on nature as can be seen in this work where the canvas seems to glow from within. This ability to capture light as it glistened on the Mediterranean, is what separated Choultsé from many of his contemporaries, a gift only previously achieved by Monet and the Impressionists.

Provenance

Private Collection, Orlando, Florida;
Private Collection, United Kingdom

Biography

Choultsé was born in Petrograd, Russia in 1877 and he studied painting with Constantin Krighitsky. The artist’s popularity dates from his first exhibition at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Petrograd, in 1903. Following this noteworthy debut, he not only became an honoured exhibitor at all the major galleries in Moscow and Petrograd, but was also elected court painter to Czar Nicholas II.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, because of his ties to the Czar, Choultsé felt obliged to leave Russia and established residency in Paris. He began exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1923. Demand for his work was increasing and his first one-man show in Paris held at the Galleries of Gerald Freres sold out on the opening day. Similar success was seen at his first one-man show in London, where all his works sold in the first few days.

Several exhibitions were arranged in New York as well. Edouard Jonas Gallery held a solo exhibition of his in 1928 and described the artist’s landscapes as: ‘the most perfect expression of nature seen from an open window in which light is depicted with a strength and reality never before equalled…. and that which fascinates above all is the freshness and harmonious strength of his colouring’.

In his 1979 biography Memoirs of an Art Dealer, Toronto art dealer G. Blair Laing wrote:

“He painted spectacular snow scenes in which the light seems to come from behind the canvas and glow. Today his style of painting is much admired with Choultsé being appreciated universally as a brilliant and analytical portrayer of nature.”

Choultsé was never allowed to return to Russia and died in Paris in 1932. Today his work is collected by an international group of admirers.

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