Lot 227

GENRICH (HEINRICH) GENRIKOVICH SCHMIDT (Russian 1861-1922)
Entrance to the Church of Saint John the Theologian, in the Kremilin, Rostov Velikiy - circa 1903
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right in Cyrillic “Г. Шмидт” and in Latin St. Petersburg. Verso with inscribed label from The Russian Art Pavilion, St. Louis Worlds Fair 1904  Additionally verso exhibits old U.S. Customs inventory label as well as an old auction label (see
17.6 inches x 24 inches (45 x 62 cm)
Estimate:  $5,000 - 7,500   € 3,750 - 5,625

Price Realized: $8,400.00

Provenance: Saint Louis Worlds Fair 1904
Literature: For a very similar painting by Schmidt see, Russian Monasteries Art and Traditions, The State Russian Museum, Palace Edition, 1997, page 216 which illustrates a painting of St. Simon’s Monastery executed by Schmidt and dated 1907. Russian paintings from the World’s Fair, St. Louis, 1904 tell a story of intrigue, money, and politics. The Russian exhibition at the St. Louis World’s Fair was the largest art collection ever sent abroad by one country to another. While the Russian exhibit included many of the few well-known Russian artists of the time such as Ilya Repin and Nicholas Roerich, most works were by young and lesser-known artists, many of whom had agreed to send their paintings to America in hopes of attracting attention in the marketplace. Shortly following the exhibition, however, it was discovered that the necessary – and costly – tariffs required to display these paintings in the United States had not been paid. What followed was a controversial chain of events that eventually brought the matter to the desk of U. S. President William Howard Taft. The works were ultimately impounded by the U.S. Customs Department and then offered for sale in a highly publicized public auction in San Francisco in 1912, where the vast majority of the paintings were purchased by Frank Havens, a wealthy Oakland businessman who owned a Piedmont art gallery. While Havens kept some paintings, most were sold most off over the years, with many sold in a private auction in Oakland in October 1916. From time to time another of these “St. Louis Russian paintings” enters the market to become rediscovered. See Robert C. Williams, Russian Art and American Money, Harvard University Press, 1980.