A portrait of Winston S. Churchill by Vasily Prokofyevich Yefanov, oil on canvas, signed and inscribed in Cyrillic on the reverse: V. Yefanov / W. Churchill / oil on canvas / 100 x 65 / 1944. It was painted in the autumn of the Fourth Moscow Conference of 9–19 October 1944, when Churchill sat across from Stalin to negotiate the political future of Eastern Europe and the so-called Percentages Agreement was informally drafted, an episode emblematic of the shifting balance of power at the close of the war.
Yefanov, a leading Soviet state artist and five-time Stalin Prize laureate, was renowned for authoritative depictions of official figures, and he presents Churchill with notable restraint: seated, in uniform, turned slightly from the viewer, absorbed in the gravity of decision rather than the rhetoric of the platform. The subdued palette and confident handling are characteristic of his mature style, here accommodating the distinct presence of a British sitter.
A Churchill of 1944 by a leading Soviet artist is a rare convergence of history, politics and art: painted from within the Soviet sphere at the very moment the post-war order was being negotiated, the work stands as both portrait and document.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm, presented in a gilt frame; typed label on the reverse identifying sitter and artist.
Provenance: Private collection; thence by descent.
A portrait of Winston S. Churchill by Vasily Prokofyevich Yefanov, oil on canvas, signed and inscribed in Cyrillic on the reverse: V. Yefanov / W. Churchill / oil on canvas / 100 x 65 / 1944. It was painted in the autumn of the Fourth Moscow Conference of 9–19 October 1944, when Churchill sat across from Stalin to negotiate the political future of Eastern Europe and the so-called Percentages Agreement was informally drafted, an episode emblematic of the shifting balance of power at the close of the war.
Yefanov, a leading Soviet state artist and five-time Stalin Prize laureate, was renowned for authoritative depictions of official figures, and he presents Churchill with notable restraint: seated, in uniform, turned slightly from the viewer, absorbed in the gravity of decision rather than the rhetoric of the platform. The subdued palette and confident handling are characteristic of his mature style, here accommodating the distinct presence of a British sitter.
A Churchill of 1944 by a leading Soviet artist is a rare convergence of history, politics and art: painted from within the Soviet sphere at the very moment the post-war order was being negotiated, the work stands as both portrait and document.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm, presented in a gilt frame; typed label on the reverse identifying sitter and artist.
Provenance: Private collection; thence by descent.
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