Our Notes & References

Extremely rare, attractive collection of 14 chromolithographs with their original envelope. No other copy traced, including in Russia.

The vivid images depict different types of the Russian empire and their occupations, including Romani people resting by a campfire in their settlement, Cossacks and other horsemen hunting, peasant women foraging for mushrooms and harvesting wheat. Several of the cards portray famous paintings by Vasilii Perov (1834-82): The Hunters at Rest, The Bird-catcher, and The Fish-catcher. Six other cards are signed “N. B.”, possibly referring to Nikolai Bogatov (1854-1935), an artist and illustrator of Russian classics and folklore. One of “N. B.”‘s images illustrates the poem by Nikolai Nekrasov, Grandpa Mazai and the Hares, in which the old man rescues the animals from a spring flood.

This lovely set was likely prepared for visitors of the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889: the envelope advertises Kushnerev’s edition titled Peintres Russes and of larger format (33 x 42 cm), showing other “Russian types” in reproductions of works by other Russian painters, excluding Perov.

Provenance

Avenir Nizoff (émigré, pianist, who lived in Edmonton, Canada, in the second half of the 20th century, and gathered a very large library of Russian works of all kinds).