A portrait of Boris Anrep

If you have ever looked at your feet as you walk into the National Gallery in London by the old main entrance, you will have spotted an extraordinary series of mosaics --  on the landing when you get up the first flight of stairs. They feature, among other luminaries of the early twentieth century, Virginia Woolf as Clio the Muse of History (below), Greta Garbo as Melpomene the Muse of Tragedy, plus a range of contemporary vignettes of British life, from football to Christmas pudding or dinosaur gazing.

They are by the Russian, sub-Bloomsbury, mosaicist Boris (von) Anrep, who designed them between the late 1920s and early 50s. I’ve always been rather keen on Anrep – largely because of his smart reworking of classical themes. In fact I had once planned to write about him, and had even got in touch with those around who still remembered him (he died in 1969), but other things got in the way.

There is actually quite a lot of Anrep work to see. He also produced mosaics for Westminster Cathedral,  for the Tate and Sandhurst, and he did a number of private Bloomsbury commissions. His was, needless to say, a colourful life beyond the tesserae, including a memorable feud with Roger Fry – who eventually went off with  Anrep’s second wife, Helen.

Anyway, interest was rewarded at the Willingham auctions last Saturday, when the husband (for I confess it was he) spotted in the catalogue and then on the wall, a good oil portrait of Anrep – done, to judge by his age, in the 1920s or possibly 30s, and signed by “L Inglesis”. Estimate £30-50.

We wanted it.

We had actually gone to the auction for a couple of chairs which turned out to be nasty, and a fender which turned out to be too small. But we soon devoted our attention to the Anrep.

The first thing we did, thanks to the iPhone, was Google “Anrep” and “Inglesis” and find out that the very same picture had been sold at Bonhams in Ipswich a few years ago (along with a painting by Anrep himself) for £47. Good news….at least Anrep wasn’t yet fashionable in East Anglia.

The auction started badly for us. A carpet fetched something like 10 times its estimate for some reason we couldn’t quite work out. But interest in Anrep turned out to be sluggish, so we got him for £50 and brought him triumphantly home.

What we now want to know is who “L Inglesis” was (or according to Bonham’s “Leonide Iglesis”). The painting is (to use the jargon of exam season) a good “beta/alpha” piece of work (the angel in the back makes it a much more interesting piece than it might look at first sight). But I am afraid that the universal reference tool (viz Google) brings no help.

We wondered if L Inglesis wasn’t a jokey pseudonym for some English guy painting a Russian?? But if anyone has any better leads, please let us know,

Comments

[Ian Patterson]

I notice that Annabel Farjeon's entry on Anrep in the ODNB mentions (in the sources) a 1958 drawing by L. Inglesi of works in the Paris studio. She may have furhter info.
PS What a nice pic!

[Mary]

Anthony...yes he had an affair with Anna A..and probably ruined her life

[anthony alcock]

Wasn't Anrep something to do with a group of poets that included Anna Akhmatova ? I seem to remember reading somewhere that they had a certain fondness for Rudyard Kipling.

[Mary]

Thanks for all your help with this...as I am soon to be back in proper on-line connection, and more important near a library, i'll let you know how researches progress.

[Tony Francis]

The angel is most likely Maud Russell who was married to the investment banker Gilbert Russell. Her maiden name was Nelke, being from German-Jewish stockbrokers. She is reported to have sat for portraits by Matisse, Sir Wm. Nicholson, and artists named Orpen and McEvoy. Click on the angel to enlarge:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=13917082
The son of Maud Russell and the banker Russell was Martin Russell who brought a clique of Sri Lankan painters back to England in 1943. The most prominent of these was George Keyt.
http://www.artsrilanka.org/martinrussell/body.html

[Fran Saban]

Mary: What about the Russian painter Leonid Berman? Right period and style and maybe the 'Inglesis' refers to a place or a style of painting?

[Michael Bulley]

To go back to the funerary monument I found on Google.fr: the long version gives the address of the cemetery, the dimensions and materials of the work of art, who to contact etc, but the name of the deceased (I assume the reference is to the person the monument commemorates) is odd - Ingleort (note the same first five letters as Inglesis). If you type Ingleort in Google, you get nothing except references to this monument. If that person's name really was Ingleort, there can't have been or be many Ingleorts, if you can find only one on Google.

[Tony Francis]

See Mottisfont Angel by Boris Anrep:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/castrovalva/301925627/

[Tony Francis]

Men used to wear ties in public. I saw a program on the History Channel about the WPA and the Great Depression in the 1930s. About half the men doing hard labor on a road crew had neck ties on. I read an article about a train engineer in 1890. In those days, engineers used to come to work early, and polish the engine, in suit and tie, to make a good impression on the riding public. Social norms have changed considerably since those days. If the picture can be identified as a mirror image, it is likely to be a self portrait (in my opinion).

[PETER WOOD]

Mary, there is a reference to Leonidas Inglesis in the list of artists in the Dizionario Universale Commanducci but I can't raise the data as the list is malfunctioning. Apologies for second posting - and for the first!

[Tom Roper]

No trace of L. Inglesis/Iglesis in Grove Art Online either. I vaguely remember a (dead-tree) directory of artists' pseudonyms from my reference librarian days. Might the UL have a copy?

[PL]

The drawing of the angel tacked up loosely behind the sitter seems to be a preparatory cartoon for a large work, possibly a fresco. It would help to date the painting -- and possibly identify the time and place of its composition -- if you could locate and date that completed work.

XJY: -- More likely than "short", the sitter's tie seems to me clumsily tied, the fat end resulting too short. Indeed the thin end of the tie may be what we see descending below and behind the other. Of course this may just be part of the shirt (they are almost the same color), in which case the thin end would have been tucked into the shirt somewhere higher up (an expedient familiar to those of us old enough to remember the days when men wore ties routinely and not just for dressing up). One must beware of anachronistic interpretations. In the twenties/ thirties the bottom of a man's four-in-hand tie (the kind in question) was not, strictly speaking, meant to be seen; even when hot weather, participation in sport, extreme youth, or the bohemian licence accorded to artistic genius allowed a man to appear in public without a coat or vest/waistcoat buttoned up over the bottom part of his tie, he would likely have tucked the same into his shirt. The fact that the sitter is not only coatless but wears his tie hanging out (and sloppily tied) would have identified him to contemporaries as an artist even in the absence of the cartoon hanging in the background.
I suspect that even on examination of the original it is impossible to say for sure whether that strip descending behind the tie represents part of the tie or part of the shirt. But If one could be sure it was the latter, we would have good reason to believe the picture to be a self portrait. For the deep shadow running down the right edge of the strip (left, from the sitter's point of view) can only have been cast by a distinct overlapping: in other words, it would have to represent the edge of one part of the shirt buttoned over the other, and that right side over left from the wearer's point of view. But men's shirts almost always button left over right. Therefore the hypothesis that the strip represents part of the shirt strongly suggests that the painting is a self-portrait, that what we see is what Anrep/ Inglesis/ Iglesis saw in the mirror.

[Tony Francis]

The style of the painting most closely matches either Augustus John or Henry Lamb. Both were acquaintances of Anrep. If I had to guess, I would go with Henry Lamb, although it could have been anyone from that school. Leonide Inglesis appears to be elusive. I would guess "English Lion" or "Church Lion"; or a double play on "Church/English Lion". Anrep liked double meanings, as well as religious themes. It could very well be a self portrait.

[Mary]

Thanks Michael Bulley. That looks a good lead. At the moment I am online only via iPhone. Will follow up as soon as I am properly connected again.
On the location ... Beard Towers is not so capacious ...that I imagine it will be the living room

[Michael Bulley]

As I'm in France, my default Google is the French one, so just out of idle curiosity I typed "Inglesis peintre" and got this:
monument funéraire de peintre, de L. Ingleort (monument sépulcral n° 10)
Localisation Ile-de-France ; Hauts-de-Seine ; Boulogne-Billancourt
Edifice nouveau cimetière (non inventorié)
Auteur(s) Inglesis L. (?, peintre, mosaïste)
Siècle 3e quart 20e siècle (?)
Copyright © Inventaire général

[Kiran]

Mary, where are you going to put your new acquisition? Guests might be fooled into thinking that Boris is a relation if you hang him in your living room or kitchen.

[Xjy]

Does sound like a pseudonym, doesn't it. Any chance it's a self-portrait?

The (arch)angel appears to be an unfinished canvas pinned to a board and leaning against a door. What did his own studio look like? El Iglesias could be "the churchy one"?? Russian icon tradition for a white emigre?

Very short tie he's wearing!

He must have had very good contacts to get all those commissions - either that or he was the only mosaicist around Bloomsbury at the time. Interesting to know about his work (if any) in Russia, pre-1917.

The pseudonym Leonid could be a pointer to St Mark?

He does look a bit like Putin, too, doesn't he :-)

[PETER WOOD]

"THE husband"! I suppose this is meant to indicate that he is the definite article and to that extent is positive. But why does Mary Beard have to "confess" that it was "he" as though men are rarely allowed to be seen when she communes with art.