Beschreibung:

KONSTANTIN EGOROVICH MAKOVSKY 1839-1915 Happy Arcadia With later signature, possibly by the artist, oil on canvas, 220 x 364cm. Provenance Possibly: Baron Sergei Pavlovich von Derviz, St. Petersburg Baron Anton Alfan, St. Petersburg Given by the Soviet Army in payment for boots, circa 1930s to Gottfried Berglund, owner of Götarsvik manor, Örebro, Sweden, and installed in the drawing room there Acquired by the present owner when he purchased Götarsvik manor in 1985 Published Possibly: Niva , St. Petersburg, 1889, no.35, p. 869 G.Romanov & A.Muratov, Zhivopis Russkogo Salona (1850-1917), St Petersburg, 2004, p.392. "Happy Arcadia" is one of sixteen canvases painted by Konstantin Makovsky for the decoration of Sergei Pavlovich von Derviz's mansion on the English Embankment in St. Petersburg. The canvas depicts the bucolic, pastoral idyll in Happy Arcadia, the mythological kingdom of love and serene happiness. The work is distinguished by its lightness, airiness and decorative qualities, all carried out in the characteristic virtuoso style for which Makovsky is so celebrated. Makovsky painted these canvases in Paris between 1886 and 1889. In June of 1887 there took place the first exhibition of these ceiling-paintings in the gallery of J. Petit in Paris, and in December 1888 they were shown in St. Petersburg in the rooms of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. At that time there were already eleven of them, but evidently he continued to work on the commission. Some of them were published in the St. Petersburg journal "Niva" of 1889 ( "Happy Arcadia" was number 24). Between 1903 and 1905 S. P. von Derviz sold his mansion and moved to Paris with his family. Baron Anton Georgievich Alftan, a Finnish businessman and the managing director of the joint-stock company "Stremsdal" now became the new owner of the property on the English Embankment, together with all its contents. In 1907 Alftan organised another exhibition of the paintings, which now belonged to him, in St. Petersburg; by this time there were sixteen of them. This exhibition received outstanding reviews in the press. The newspaper Novoe Vremya (7/20 November 1907, No 11371) wrote "It's has been a long time since we had such a beautiful exhibition as Makovsky's, which opened on Sunday; there have been bigger and more interesting exhibitions, but none more beautiful". The next recorded mention of the paintings comes ten years later. After Makovsky's death, a large exhibition was planned at the Imperial Academy to take place from the 7th from private collections. The exhibition was at first delayed , because it proved impossible to gather all the items from private collections on time, and was then cancelled altogether, on account of the notorious events in Russia of the autumn of 1917. However, amongst the paintings listed for inclusion in the exhibition were the canvases on mythological subjects from the collection of Baron Alftan. In 1918, Baron Alftan left Russia and returned to his native Finland. It is not known whether he managed to bring his paintings with him. However, news of their continued existence came from abroad. In all likelihood, the paintings had different fates. The famous critic and son of the artist Sergei Makovsky wrote that he saw some of them in Paris before the Second World War. "I did not find the artist's signature on a single one of them" (Sergei Makovsky, "Portrety Sovremennikov", Moscow, 2000 p57). There is a historical anecdote, recounted in the journal "Solntse Rossii", according to which Baron Alftan persuaded Makovsky to sign his canvases. The present author has seen later signatures on only two of the works from this series. Whether they were put there by Makovsky himself is difficult to say.Beginning in 1980, individual panels from this series created for the Van Derviz mansion have appeared on the international art market, both in Europe and in America. It is well known that "Happy Arcadia" was sold first at Hagelstam Auctionee