IVAN OLINSKY (RUSSIAN-AMERICAN 1878-1962)

Portrait of Marie,
oil on canvas
91.5 x 76.2 cm (36 x 30 in.)
signed upper left

PROVENANCE
Norton Gallery and School of Art, Inc., West Palm Beach, gift of R.H. Norton (label on backing board)
Christie's, New York, November 28, 1995, lot 236 (sold by the above to benefit the Collections Endowment)
Acquired at the above by the present owner

LOT NOTES
Ivan Grigorievich Olinsky, born in 1878 in Elizabegrad, Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine), came with his family to New York City, aged thirteen, in 1890. Soon after, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design, where he studied under American Impressionists Julian Alden Weir and Robert Vonnoh, as well as muralist and illustrator George W. Maynard, who then hired Olinsky as an assistant. In the 1890s, he was also a student the Art Students League under Bryson Burroughs. In 1900, Olinsky moved on to Boston as an aide to John La Farge. Increasingly motivated to establish himself as a painter in his own right, Olinsky ended his eight-year assistantship to La Farge and embarked a tour of Italy and France with his wife and first child. The most notable pictures of the period are his stunning Venetian scenes, including La Fete, San Marco (lot 155 of this sale).

Upon his return to New York in 1910, Olinsky took up a studio in Greenwich Village, where he began producing, to near-immediate acclaim, the sensitive, Impressionism-inflected society portraits with which he is still associated (this part of his oeuvre is represented by lots 150, 156 and 157).

He exhibited frequently, largely in group shows, notably at Macbeth Gallery (which had recently introduced "The Eight") and the Lyme Art Association of Old Lyme, whose artist colony Olinsky discovered in 1917 and participated in until the end of his life. Hildegard Cummings, author of the influential catalogue accompanying Olinsky's posthumous 1995 retrospective at the William Benton Museum of Art, attributes the lack of individual lifetime exhibitions to commercial success so tremendous that the painter simply did not have enough pictures to present for a solo show.

In addition to painting, Olinsky maintained a fifty-year career as a teacher at both of his alma maters (one of his students was Lee Krasner), was a member of the Association of Mural Painters and the Salmagundi Club, and recipient of numerous prizes: the Thomas B. Clarke Prize (1914) the Andrew Carnegie Prize (1929 and 1955) and the Clara Obrig Prize (1939 and 1940).

CONDITION
Observed in frame without the backing board, the painting is in overall excellent original condition. Some limited areas of craquelure. Scuff to the lower right. Inspection under UV light shows an even layer of varnish; no apparent signs of restoration. N.B. The plaster and gilt on the frame is unstable and flaking, revealing the bole.

N.B. All lots are sold in as-is condition at the time of sale. Please note that any condition statement regarding works of art is given as a courtesy to our clients in order to assist them in assessing the condition. The report is a genuine opinion held by Shapiro Auctions and should not be treated as a statement of fact. The absence of a condition report or a photograph does not preclude the absence of defects or restoration, nor does a reference to particular defects imply the absence of any others. Shapiro Auctions, LLC., including its consultants and agents, shall have no responsibility for any error or omission.