Sergei Y. Soudeikine
American, born Russia, 1882 - 1946Sarah and Her Uncle, ca. 1940s
On view
Oil on canvas mounted on board
Dimensions21 7/8 × 17 3/4 in. (55.6 × 45.1 cm)
Museum purchase, 2000.67
The subject and title of this work—Sarah and Her Uncle—is all we know about the identity and relationship of the sitters. Sergei Soudeikine uses a number of material objects to suggest the status of his subjects—such as the book, pocket watch, and elegant manner of dress. Though the traditional three-quarter format is followed here, Soudeikine energizes the composition by having the uncle turned to his left (our right), while his niece faces more toward the viewer.
Russian-born Soudeikine earned an international reputation as a painter and stage designer. After attending the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he embarked on a multifaceted career that took him to Paris, where he exhibited with the Russian contingent in the 1906 Salon d'Automne, and then to New York, where he settled permanently in 1922. Responding to avant-garde art movements of his time, Soudeikine began to work in a sometimes whimsical and fantastic Symbolist style, one he would later leave behind.
