Ivan Ivanovich Bilibin

(Russian, 1876-1942)

An illustration for Le Coq d'Or, Tsar Dodon meets the Queen of Shemakhan

Footnotes

Provenance
Shapiro Auction, New York, 28 February 2015, lot 70
Collection of Oliver Hoare
Thence by descent

Exhibited
Alexandria, December 1924, Ivan Bilibine Exposition, illustrated no. 21 in the catalogue


Trained by Ilya Repin, and later influenced by Japanese prints, Bilibin translated his fascination with Russian folklore into unforgettable images. His fame as an illustrator was already established by 1899, when he released his first collection of illustrations of Russian fairy tales. He drew revolutionary cartoons during the Revolution of 1905, and designed the sets for Rimsky-Korsakov's first production of The Tale of the Golden Cockerel. He lived through turbulent times. Unhappy with the October Revolution, he left Russia, and after brief sojourns in Cairo and Alexandria settled in Paris in 1925. He was uncomfortable away from his homeland and returned in 1936. He died during the siege of Leningrad and was buried in a collective grave.

Pushkin wrote The Tale of the Golden Cockerel in 1834, his last fairy tale in verse. It is based on a short story in Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, entitled 'Legend of the Arabian Astrologer'. The final two verses: Tale of sense, if not of truth!/ Food for thought to honest youth reveal the values Pushkin attributed to fairy tales.

The illustration in the present lot comes from The Golden Cockerel production. The story is about Tsar Dodon, a ruthless and warrior King, who in his old age wanted some peace and to be invincible. A sorcerer gave him a golden cockerel which knew from which direction danger came from and in return the sorcerer got a favour. One day, danger came from one direction into which he sent his sons into battle, and then followed himself. When he got there, he saw his sons dead but forgot his sorrow when the princess of Shemakhan came out of the tent. This is the image we have in our present lot. At the end of the tale, the King took the princess back to his kingdom and did not allow the sorcerer to take her, and therefore died, killed by the cockerel. Pushkin ends this, saying that this is a lesson for the young and ruthless.

Художественный талант Ивана Билибина, сформировавшийся под влиянием гения Ильи Репина, русского фольклора, а также японской гравюры, воплотился в создании незабываемых художественных образов. Известность художник приобрел уже в 1899 году после выпуска первого сборника иллюстраций. В 1905 году Билибин пишет революционные карикатуры, а позже работает над иллюстрациями к сказкам Пушкина и создаёт сказочные декорации с древнерусскими орнаментами для первой постановки Римского-Корсакова Золотой петушок. Пушкин написал Сказку о золотом петушке в 1834 году основываясь на сюжете из новеллы Легенды об арабском звездочёте Вашингтона Ирвинга.