Leonid and his daughters and his wife stayed in Germany from 1924 to 1936, when he was in his sixties and seventies.
At this late age Leonid had to start his career afresh. He continued with his customary energy and exploratory vivacity but, because he no longer had a salary, he did many commissioned portraits, and still lifes of fruit and flowers.
The exploratory techniques that he had been using from early on recur in different forms in his portraits so that, for instance, to create the lighter passages on the face. Especially under the eyes in this remarkably energetic portrait of an unknown man [1].
There continue to be exquisite landscapes in mixed media: like the beautiful new moon over the Chiemsee [2].
The watercolours, too, are exceptionally quick and light. There's a watercolour watermelon [3] speckled with pips, which can only be displayed for short and rare periods to avoid fading. Currently we’ve hung a vase of overblown roses [4] whose colours are subtly true (or ‘verno’) again – you will note that the glass vase is half-empty, and its yellowing water is visibly stale.
Epilogue
The Artist in Overview
Make sure your volume is on
Leonid and his daughters and his wife came to Germany from 1924 to 1936 when he was in his sixties and seventies.
Leonid had to start his career afresh and in that time he continued with the energy and exploratory vivacity but, because he had to earn money, he did a lot of commissioned portraits and a lot of still lifes of fruit and flowers. He also was welcomed into the Jewish Russian community and did numerous portraits of figures there including this portrait of An-Sky who was a famous Jewish author whom he had known in Russia.
And these exploratory techniques that he had been using very early on become apparent in a different form in his portraits so that, for instance, we can see his use of blank bits of canvas in curious ways, just around the edges of a portrait, indicating perhaps that the background isn't important - the important thing is the face at the heart of the picture as in the Einstein for instance.
Or odd little gaps of canvas that create the lighter passages on the face as in this remarkable portrait of a not very good looking sitter.
There are also wonderful landscapes: the beautiful new moon over the Chiemsee in the basement.
Lovely watercolours, always vividly true to life, but very, very quick and light. There's a wonderful watermelon which is so juicy and with little dark seeds in it, which we can't hang all the time because it'll fade. But there's a beautiful bunch of roses in a vase and he's looked at the dirty water in the vase halfway down and it's stained that yellowish colour.
