Artist of the week: Eugene Lanceray
ARTinvestment.RU   25 мая 2020

History, pricing and marketing indicators of the master Cabinet sculptures, one of the best animal painters of the second half of the nineteenth century and representative of the dynasty Benoit-Лансере-Серебряковых Evgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray

Years of life: 1848-1886

Direction: animalism

type of art: sculpture

Life and work

a man of amazing destiny, whose contribution to the development of national culture and art can hardly be overestimated, Evgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray was born on 12 (24) August 1848 in Morshansk, Tambov province in the family of a councillor of state, engineer of lines of communication, Ludwig Paul (Alexander Pavlovich) Lancer — the son of an officer in Napoleon's army Field Lancer, wounded at the battle of Borodino and then the remaining in Russia. Art he became interested in since childhood. It is known that already at the age of seven, in 1855-1856 he studied drawing in Yekaterinoslav (now the city of Dnepr, Ukraine), the artist S. E. of the FPGA. However, the preference was given all the same modeling. His main interest from an early age had horses and everything associated with them.

the artist's Sister Maria recalled, "he Cut artistically from the horses and riders. He had whole regiments of knights, Cossacks... But my Wife didn't like that you can see the edges of the map upstairs horses, and he began, with great difficulty, of course (because the wax is hard), to sculpt, just sticking a match to the feet of the horses... his First tiny group (which-то engravings) was the horse-мать, batting her foal from the wolf. The horse was painted with white paint colt — black wolf — brown, with red tongue, and the grass is green. It was probably in 1859". However, his first experiences in the modeling was so successful that in the same 1859-м he odinnadtsatimetrovy, created her first wax "three", which was given to the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Alexander III.

Great influence on the fate of Lancer has had a move to St.-Петербург in 1861. In the year of the move father, Alexander, was able to introduce the son of Ivan Aivazovsky and one of the best at that time, the makers of animal sculptures, the author of the famous horses on the Anichkov bridge by Peter Karlovich Klodt. Both artists praised the work of the young sculptor and advised his father not to give the boy to study in a specialized art institution, so there didn't ruin his natural talent.

Apparently, the Council Alexander Lancer followed, as further education Eugene in 2-й classical gymnasium of St. Petersburg, and then in 1864-1870 he studied at the law faculty of Saint-Петербургского University and even worked as a translator in the Ministry of Finance. However, the desire to develop their artistic skills never left him. Since the mid 1860-х years, Yevgeny Lanceray began to present their work at the Imperial Academy of arts, and soon received the title of class artist of II degree. In 1869 he became the artist of the first degree, and in 1876 he received the title of honorary member.

Professionally artistic craft Yevgeny Lanceray was not trained, but to call him an artist-самоучкой it still doesn't. Along with the lessons at the University, he has successfullyhe worked in the workshops of the famous St. Petersburg artists, including outstanding workshop of the master Cabinet sculptures of Nikolai Liberiha. In 1867 and 1876 he twice went to Paris to study art casting.

Ability to work with the form, compositional perfection and attention to detail quickly made Eugene A. popular author of the armchair sculpture. And if in 1860-е the years his work was mainly created for the orders, in the 1870-х many of his models have been used to create serial forms. Important role in popularization and dissemination of creativity Lancer played the owner of a foundry in the factory Felix Chopin, in the late 1870-х years bought from the sculptor a number of models, among which was the celebrated "Farewell of the Cossack Cossack" and "Catching the wild horse".

In 1883, Chopin was sent Lancer in Algeria. It was after this visit, the sculptor has created a series of Arabic stories, works of the so-called Algerian cycle. Despite his poor health, Evgeny traveled. And not only abroad. A large number of stories he brought from his travels in Bashkiria, the Volga and the Caucasus. The main themes of his work, however, remained unchanged: ethnographic and genre scenes and the image of the military. Always on horseback.

One of the hallmarks of his art was the desire with documentary precision to convey every nuance of appearance and the movements of the characters. No matter whether it concerned the national characteristics or military form. In a letter to his friend, the editor of the newspaper "New time" V. S. Rossolovskiy, talking about the progress of work on the song "hero with a banner" (1885), he wrote: "I am currently busy with a large figure of Russian heroes of time [Vladimir] red Sun. On the bas-relief of the pedestal I think to portray some of the details of the legends about Ilya Muromets. But to call her a figure of fear, no matter how to do what-нибудь historical blunder which already does then not correct".

With the same scrutiny and precision using as the preparatory material of his own sketches and photographs, he depicted horses. Good material for such images had a lot. In addition to his work in the Ministry and creative activities, Evgeny Lanceray was engaged in breeding horses. Engaged in earnest and for a long time. Already in 1877, the artist's wife Ekaterina Nikolaevna Benoit-Лансере wrote his parents in St. Petersburg, "Jack began to work, makes a portrait of his horse. He is very happy with the horse, they have 9 foals, one better than the other". And in 1884 he bought property in the estate of Neskuchnoye and-a-half stud. It was there, in the Kharkov district, he spent his last years. March 23 (April 4), 1886 Evgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray died in boring from tuberculosis.

Despite the long illness of the sculptor, from-за which in the last years of his life he almost never engaged in the work, the legacy of Evgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray is about 400 works — sculpture, small plastic and decorative-прикладногоart. He was not involved in casting, working mainly with wax models, but the casting of his works in silver and bronze foundries engaged in the largest factory in the country, — Ovchinnikov, Sazikov, Bohun, Grachev, Sokolov, Chopin, Dniper. Today, his Cabinet sculpture by-прежнему highly valued by collectors and the market and is a benchmark of the genre.

Work of Eugene Lanceray exhibited in the life of a sculptor at exhibitions in the halls of the Academy of arts in St. Petersburg (1869-1874), international exhibitions in London (1872), Philadelphia (1876), Paris (1878), in the "Russian Department" of the world exhibition in Vienna (1873) and in Antwerp (1885). A retrospective exhibition of the author, devoted to 100-летнему and 150-летнему anniversaries from the date of his birth, were held in 1949 and 1998 in the State Tretyakov gallery.

the Work of the sculptor is represented in many Museum and private collections, including the State Tretyakov gallery, State Russian Museum, Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin, the National Museum "Kiev art gallery" (formerly Kiev Museum of Russian art), numerous private collections in Russia, China, USA and Europe.

Financial performance

the Three most expensive works of Eugene Lanceray made sculpture sold in 2010-2012, in new-Йорке auction house Sotheby's: "Troika" showed the result of $206 500 (2012), "Arab play by horses" was sold for $326 500 (2010). For the most expensive sculpture Lancer — "Arabic horse games" — in 2011, a private collector paid, including the fee of the auction house, $500 482. It should be noted that 19 of the 20 most expensive works of the sculptor was sold by Sotheby's and Christie's (new-Йорк and London), and only one — auction house Stockholms Auktionsverk (Stockholm). Also note that most successfully sold works was accompanied by a good provenance — in particular, the sculpture "Troika" (the result of $206 500) had previously been donated by the Italian king Umberto I (Michael von Lieb, 1844-1900) the President of the Senate of Italy, count Domenico Farini.

According to the database ARTinvestment.RU, at the time of publication, the sculptor has 741 auction sale, including sculpture — 738 works, painting — 2 works, graphics — 1 work. The average price of sold works — $19.6 thousand, the Total capitalization on the public market — $10.37 million Has a positive balance of sold and unsold works 528 213 (71% of all the auction ended with a sale).

table 1. Sales by period of holding of the auction

table 2. Sales by country the auction

table 3. Re-sale

Results of re-sales of Eugene Lanceray not significant for three reasons. In-первых, in the public market there has been only two (the bulk occurring in the private dealer market), which makes it impossible though as-нибудь to rely on statistics. In-вторых, both auction precedent relate to bad timing and geography: in the mid-1990-х auction market experienced a period of formation, and buyers provincial auction house in Missouri, USA, in mid-2000-х could not appreciate the work of classic Russian sculptor (for the same reason, the expanded geography of sales of the Lancer is not a sign of stability in all international markets — main markets for it are still Russia, UK, Germany and France). In-третьих for sculptures of the XIX century are characterized by long-term holding period that was not sustained by the owners: in both cases, the period between buying and selling in 12 months speaks to the speculative nature of transactions, which does not always lead to a positive result with Antiques.

we Use the calculation of another indicator — exceeded the estimate in the successful sales (remember, their share is 71 % of the total number of auction precedents). The average estimate of all sold works was exceeded by 171 % — in other words, the sellers received an average amount of 1.7 times more than the initial estimation of the auction house. The upper limit of the estimate is fixed at 57 % of sales (275works from 482). For the Russian authors, with a positive balance of sold and unsold works, the figure is very high.

On the current 331-м AI Auction a bronze sculpture "Linear Cossack Cossack".

Maria Kuznetsova, AI
Denys Belkevych, AI

Sources: rusiskusstvo.ru, w.histrf.ru, 2spbg.ru, artinvestment.ru