Executed in St. Petersburg ca 1916. Gouache. 82 x 58 cm.
Maya Degutniks, b. 1896 in St Petersburg and moved to Sweden after 1917.
Thence by descent.
Stockholms Auktionsverk, 8 June 2017, lot 3224.
This lovely portrait of a young woman, dressed in bohemian style, relaxing in a chair with her Italian Greyhound in her lap, was executed in Russia during the turbulent time just before the revolution. The sitter is Maya Degutniks, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1896 and who left Russia around 1916-17 to settle in Sweden. The artist has not been identified, but it is a work of great quality painted either by a member of the art movement Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) in St. Petersburg, or one closely associated with the movement.