Mikhail Vrubel’s influence on Russian Art can be compared to that of Cézanne on Western Art. From 1890 Vrubel blazed a trail of experimentation before descending into madness and dying in an asylum in 1910, aged just 54. Fellow-artist Alexander Benois, in his funeral oration, paid tribute to his importance by evoking the ‘Vrubel Epoch.’ This rare portrait shows the son of the industrialist and renowned arts patron Savva Mamontov. Although drawn in the 1890s, its execution – with form proceeding from geometric shapes – is revolutionary. The portrait was formerly owned by the family of the Academician Ivan Pavlov and the Kukrinyksy artist trio responsible for Russia’s most famous propaganda posters of World War II.
