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Video: The tragedy of the author of the most famous portrait of Chekhov: How he lost his family and paintings, and for which he got to Solovki Osip Braz
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Over several centuries of development, Russian culture has presented the world with a whole galaxy of brilliant painters, whose works have entered the world treasury of fine arts. Among them are renowned artists and undeservedly forgotten ones. One of the last - a talented master of the portrait genre Osip Emmanuilovich Braz, author of the famous portrait of A. P. Chekhov from the Tretyakov Gallery. The name of the Russian artist, academician and collector, unlike his creations, is known to very few people for very objective reasons, subordinate to the trends of the time in which the painter lived and worked.
Osip Braz in his works skillfully combined realism with elements of impressionism and modernism; he was rightfully considered one of the outstanding Russian portrait painters of the early 20th century. However, the artist had not only creative success, career growth and a happy family union, but also the arrest on false charges, and the confiscation of the collection, and the years of imprisonment in Solovki, and the loss of two sons and the death of his wife, whom he survived only for a year.
Several pages from the artist's biography
Braz Osip (Joseph) Emmanuilovich was born in the winter of 1873 in Odessa. He received his art education at the Odessa Art School, after graduating from which in 1890 with a large bronze medal, he studied for several years in Munich and Paris, where he studied the Western European art of painting. Then he moved to Amsterdam to comprehend the mystery of painting by the old Dutch masters.
It was there, under the influence of innovative Western European art, that the novice master radically changed his painting technique, simplifying compositional construction, but at the same time giving activity to colors and decorative expressiveness. This technique was especially vividly manifested in landscape painting and still lifes of the artist.
In 1895, after returning to Russia, he entered the Academy of Arts, where he studied in the studio of I. E. Repin. And literally a year later, Braz received the title of class artist of the 1st degree for portraits of D. N. Kardovsky, F. E. Rushits and E. M. Martynova. The portrait of the latter was awarded a prize from the Society for the Encouragement of Artists and was acquired by Pavel Tretyakov for his gallery.
In subsequent years, a series of portraits of famous figures of art and culture brought wide popularity to the painter. Thus, the artist's brush belongs to the famous lifetime portrait of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, on which he worked by order of Pavel Tretyakov in 1897-1898.
At one time, Osip Braz's portrait painting was exhibited with great success in Paris, Vienna and Rome. In 1914, the artist was elected an academician of the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts.
In addition, Osip Braz was an avid collector. Even in his youth, the aspiring painter became interested in the art of the Netherlands of the 17th century and by the 1920s he had amassed a significant collection of paintings. Also in the Braz collection was a solid collection of bronze artworks from the Renaissance. And it should be noted that it was this seemingly innocent hobby that played a cruel joke with him in the future.
The revolutionary coup of 1917 in Russia, which broke many fates among the representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, did not bypass the artist and his family. Although immediately after the revolution, his personal and creative destiny was developing very well. He worked in the Hermitage as a restorer, curator and head of the Dutch painting department, and in the early 1920s he was a teacher at VKHUTEIN.
Black times for Osip Braz and his family came in 1924, when the artist was arrested on a number of false charges. He was charged with buying up works of art with the aim of further exporting them abroad, as well as disclosing information about the upcoming sale of Hermitage valuables and espionage. According to the court sentence, he received three years of imprisonment in a special camp on Solovki. The entire collection of paintings and sculptures collected by the artist by that time was nationalized.
Thanks to the petitions of the Leningrad art societies and influential friends - Igor Grabar and Maximilian Voloshin, Osip Braz, two years later, they were released early from the Solovetsky camp without the right to live in the central cities. Thus, the artist was sent into exile in Novgorod, where he was engaged in the development of funds and the restoration of monuments. And in his spare time he painted watercolors and arranged personal exhibitions.
For two years, the artist sought permission from the authorities to leave Russia in order to reunite with his family, then living in Germany. Permission was finally obtained in 1928, and Osip Emmanuilovich left his homeland forever.
The tragedy of the Osip Braz family
Osip married the artist Lola Landshof, the adopted daughter of a major German entrepreneur and close friend of Lyubov Mendeleeva-Blok. United by common interests and creativity, the couple lived quite happily. Lola gave birth to Osipa two sons. However, after the arrest of her husband, hard times came, the woman was forced to leave Russia in order to save her children. At that time, one of the boys developed tuberculosis from poor nutrition. And Lola, hoping to cure her son, takes the children to Germany to her relatives. The boy could not be saved even abroad. Soon the second son also dies of this disease. Osip, who by that time had managed to free himself, barely had time to come to his death.
Heartbroken by the Braz spouses, they moved to Paris, where deep knowledge and previously acquired experience allowed the artist to successfully conduct antiquarian activities and reassemble a significant collection of works of art. However, soon Lola, the artist's wife, died of tuberculosis. And a year later, in 1936, Osip Emmanuilovich himself was gone.
Continuing the theme of Russian artists who fell into disgrace from the Soviet regime, read: The ups and downs of the most expressive Russian artist of the Silver Age: Philip Malyavin.
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