Portrait N.M.Sapozhnikovoy, Study (1915). Nicolai Fechin (Russian-American, 1881-1955). Oil on

Portrait N.M.Sapozhnikovoy, Study (1915). Nicolai Fechin (Russian-American, 1881-1955). Oil on canvas.

Fechin’s “savage, splendid, and heterogeneous” canvas displayed a “barbaric mastery of form and color.” Fechin’s early preference for thick layers of color and pigment with very little oil, and a penchant for conflating the real and the abstract, would bring him international acclaim in the first decades of the 20th century.