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Paintings by artists Deineka, Polenov top lots at MacDougall’s Russian auction

Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams auction houses will also take part in the Russian Week

LONDON, November 1. /TASS/. Paintings Aleksandr Deineka (1899 -1969) and Vasily Polenov (1844-1927) will be the top lots at a MacDougall’s fine arts auction on November 29, a spokesperson for the company told TASS.

MacDougall’s traditionally takes part in the weeks of Russian fine arts trading organized in London twice a year - in May/June or November/December.

Deineka’s Socialist realism canvas "Heroes of the First Five-Year Plan" starts at 2- 3 million pounds. It comes from a large private collection in the US and is the first version of a panel picture the painter created for Expo 1937 in Paris.

The work is one a grandiose cycle of representative compositions revealing the theme of a new Soviet hero worker, which Deineka created in the second half of the 1930’s. Except for this painting, all other works from the cycle are currently kept in museum collections, the spokesperson said.

MacDougall’s regards as an absolute sensation another two canvasses, both from Vasily Polenov’s cycle "From the Savior’s Life". They are unique for the very fact they have appeared in the market of fine arts for the first time in a hundred years.

Polenov painted "He Resolutely Set Out for Jerusalem" (bidding at 400,000-500,000 pounds) in 1923. The work was purchased by a Polish diplomat, whose family has kept it ever since then.

Another painting, "Jesus Christ with Mary Magdalene", has an estimated price of 360,000-500,000 pounds. MacDougall’s experts call it Polenov’s behest and the result of the forty years he devoted to depiction of Jesus’s earthly life.

All in all, the auction house has put up for the bidding more than 300 lots - paintings, drawings, applied arts, and icons. The top thirteen lots will be exhibited in Moscow on November 2-3 at Zubov’s House, bldg. 1, 9 Solzhenitsyn Str.

The list of works to appear at the viewing session in Moscow includes a unique canvas by Leonid Solomatkin (1837-1883), as well as paintings by Pyotr Zakharov-Chechenets (1816-1846), the top-rated Russian impressionist Konstantin Korovin (1861-1939), Boris Grigoryev (1886 -1939), Sergei Sudeikin (1882-1946), and Andrei Mylnikov (1919-2012).

Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams auction houses will also take part in the Russian Week.

The revenues from the sales held at the beginning of June totaled almost $ 30 million.