Tag Archives: russia

A bust of Epstein and the USSR (Soviet Union)

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I HAVE JUST VISITED London’s Wallace Collection to view a small exhibition called “The Wallace Collection at War”. It continues until 25 October 2026. Small though it is, it contains several artefacts that resonate with the research I did when writing my book about north London’s Hampstead district.

During WW2, the valuable artworks that comprised the Wallace Collection were removed from their home, Hertford House on Manchester Square, and hidden in caves and cellars so that they would neither be damaged by bombing nor found by the enemy should they have managed to invade the UK.

In 1942, in order to raise money to send medical equipment and clothing to Soviet Russia, Lady Clementine Churchill (Sir Winston’s wife) organised the “Artists Aid Russia” exhibition, which was held in the then empty Hertford House. Some of the exhibition stands and other display arrangements were designed by the architect Erno Goldfinger, whose creations include Trellick Tower in North Kensington, and his own residence in Hampstead. For five years, I practised dentistry in the shadow of Trellick Tower. I have also visited his Hampstead home several times.

The 1942 exhibition included 900 works by living artists. A few of these works are currently on display in Hertford House. They include artworks by John Skeaping. Carel Weight, Ethel Léontine Gabain, and Charles Murray. There is also a poster by Henri Kay Henrion. He was married to the artist Daphne Hardy Henrion. One of their two sons went to the same school as I did in the 1960s. For a while they lived in Hampstead.

The “Artists Aid Russia” exhibition was launched in late 1942 by Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky (1884-1975) and his wife Agniya. The first time I encountered his name was while writing my book about Hampstead. In “Architect Errant”, the autobiography of the architect Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978), he wrote of the artist George Romney’s former home, where he resided:

“It was a splendid house for large parties and we gave a lot of them – dances every so often, a show by Ballet Rambert … We also gave a party to meet the Russian Ambassador, M[onsieur]. Maisky, who made a speech from the gallery balcony …”

As part of my research, I acquired a copy of “The Maisky Diaries” (edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky). Although there is no mention of the visit to Hampstead, there is much which is relevant to one of the items in the current exhibition at Hertford House. This artefact is an excellent bronze sculpture depicting Maisky’s head. It was made in 1941 by the renowned artist Jacob Epstein (1880-1959). The diaries contain much about this work of art and its execution.

On 14 February 1941, Maisky wrote:

“Jacob Epstein has convinced me to permit him to make my bust. I warned the sculptor that the USSR is a country of genuine democracy, so Soviet ambassadors are not able to pay artists of the capitalist world the fees they are accustomed to. Epstein was insistent …”

Maisky was intrigued by the creative process, which required at least six sittings. He described how Epstein gradually formed his head out of grey clay.  He wrote:

“Let’s see what happens next. I’ll have five or six sittings in all. With such original artists as Epstein, you never know what will come out in the end – you yourself or a monster.”

The ambassador described the artist’s studio at 18 Hyde Park Gate:

“A large bright room with two enormous windows … Astonishing artistic chaos. Scattered over tables, chairs, and benches and the floor are statues, heads, arms, legs and other parts of the human body in clay and plaster of Paris … The figure of the sculptor moves quickly and deftly amidst the vast chaos. His baggy grey trousers are stained with clay and plaster of Paris. Epstein is quite a charming man …”

Eventually, the bust was completed.

While he was in London, Maisky became very popular. As Gorodetsky noted at the end of the extracts from Maisky’s diaries:

“Neither Stalin nor Molotov could watch with equanimity the popular cult of  Maisky in London, which reached dimensions second only to the cult of Stalin himself … While flattered by the cult evolving around him, Maisky was anxious to keep it on the back burner. He was quick to turn down an invitation by the sculptor Epstein to attend the private viewing of his works at Leicester Galleries …”

Despite the risk of trouble from Stalin in Russia, Maisky sat for a portrait by Oskar Kokoschka. He sat for this portrait shortly before he was recalled to the USSR in July 1943. This picture is now in the Tate Gallery’s collection.

As you can see, the small exhibition at the Wallace Collection proved to be of great interest, especially as so many of the exhibits overlapped with things that have interested me in the past.

Pelicans in the park in London

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THREE HUNDRED AND sixty-two years ago, the Russian Ambassador to King Charles II donated some pelicans, which were put into St James Park, an open space redeveloped by the king. Before that, during the reign of King James I (he was on the throne of England from 1603 to 1625), the land, which is now the park, was home to exotic animals, including camels, crocodiles, an elephant and birds (kept in aviaries). These animals can no longer be found in the park, but the pelicans remain.

Since their introduction in 1664, over 40 pelicans have resided in St James Park, but none of them produced any offspring until this year, 2026. The first of four chicks hatched on 17 May. The park authorities have no idea which of the pelicans is or are the parents.

Today, 6 July 2026, we visited the park, and were lucky enough to find one pelican taking a stroll near a footpath. As for the other adults, which can often be spotted on a rocky island in the park’s lake, there were none to be seen. The chicks were also out of sight.

The exciting birth of pelicans occurred within a stone’s throw of The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. Apart from spotting pelicans, St James Park is a fine place to see a wide variety of other waterfowl.

Art upon which you can walk with impunity

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THE ARTIST BORIS Anrep (1883-1969) was born in St Petersburg, Russia. At first, he studied law at Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg, and graduated in 1905. Three years later, he abandoned the law, and went to Paris to study art. In Paris, he met many of Britain’s leading cultural figures. At the outbreak of WW1 until 1916, Anrep served in the Russian Army. In 1917, he was called to London to serve as Military Secretary to the Russian Government Committee. After that, he never returned to Russia.

After a visit to Italy where he saw the wonderful Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, Anrep decided to begin making mosaics, and it is for these that he is rightly remembered. During WW1, the floor of an octagonal room in London’s Tate Britain was badly damaged by bombing. It had contained a collection of artworks by William Blake (1757-1827). In 1923, after he had been commissioned to make mosaics in several places in London, Anrep was asked to create a mosaic floor in the octagonal room. This work of art, upon which you can walk without being stopped, consists of eight illustrated panels, each one containing some words from “The Proverbs of Hell” from Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (written in 1790). The panels form part of a colourful mosaic that covers the entire floor of the room. Sadly, part of Anrep’s work is covered by small display cases containing works of art by other artists. Nevertheless, most of the mosaic is visible, and is well worth seeing.

Another place to see Anrep’s mosaic work is on the main staircase of the older part of London’s National Gallery. However, there the crowds make viewing of his work far more difficult than at the Tate Modern.

When Anrep died, he was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, a place I walked past countless number of times during the first three decades of my life – whenever I travelled between my family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb and Golders Green station. It was only long after I had stopped living in that area that I ‘discovered’ Boris Anrep and his art.

A peculiar mission in the wilds of Russia

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THE AUTHOR SOPHY Roberts made several quite arduous trips to various parts of Siberia. Her aim was to find pianofortes that had, in various ways and at different times in Russia’s history, found their way to cities and very remote places east of the Ural mountains, in Siberia. Her book, “The Lost Pianos of Siberia” describes her adventures and some of the pianos she found.

What made the book interesting for me was not so much the pianos themselves, but what Ms Roberts wrote about Siberia: its history; the people she met; and the landscape she saw. She also described early travel accounts of this vast often snowy part of Russia. Furthermore, she provided interesting insights into the Russian piano making industry that flourished both before and after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Illustrated with photographs and maps, this book is both fascinating and a compelling read

Paintings from Russia with love … and oil

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ROSNEFT IS A Russian company that supplies oil to India. The company has sponsored an exhibition, “Dream Vision”, that we visited in Bombay’s branch of India’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). The show will continue until 15 January 2026.

The works on display are by a People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, Nikas Safronov (born in the USSR in 1956). So far, he has painted portraits of at least 300 notable people, including one of President Donald Trump.

By Nikas Safronov

The portraits are not on display at the NGMA. Instead, there are about 40 of his well-executed paintings. Each of them is painted in a classical style that cannot be described as adventurous. However, most of the paintings contain whimsical or Surrealist elements. Some of the works contain Indian subject matter. The paintings are displayed in a large room onto whose walls and ceilings video images are projected.

Although this is by no means one of the best exhibitions I have seen, it is interesting to see what is being produced, and approved of, in Russia, which has become culturally isolated from much of the world beyond its borders. In fact, this exhibition is part of what the Hindustan Times (30 December 2025) described as part:
“… of a broader Indo-Russian cultural initiative, Dream Vision positions art as a form of cultural diplomacy…”

Today, 2 January 2026, we were discussing this exhibition with a friend, who knew of the initiative, and had recently attended an event that had been part if it: a ballet performed by dancers who had come to India from St Petersburg.

Although I have reservations about the profundity of the artworks we saw at the NGMA, I was pleased to have seen the show and to have viewed what kind of work is being produced by an artist who is currently highly regarded in Russia.

A socialist and a vegetarian by the seashore on the Isle of Wight

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A DISTINCTIVE BUILDING stands opposite the Art Deco Winter Garden (built by 1936) high above the seashore of Ventnor on the south side of the Isle of Wight. With a tower overlooking the sea, the edifice facing the Art Deco structure was which was built in 1846 by the Reverend Richard John Shutte (1800-1860), who had once been a canon at St Paul’s Cathedral. It was named St Augustine Villa (see photograph below), and now houses a hotel and restaurant.

Several Russians opposed to the Imperial Romanov regime, including the writer Ivan Turgenev(1818-1883) visited Ventnor during the 19th century. Amongst these was Alexander Herzen (1812-1870), who was the ‘father’ of Russian Socialism’. In 1852, he and his family began living in England for several years. During this sojourn, he made some visits to the Isle of Wight. In September 1855, Herzen stayed in Augustine Villa, which he had rented. However, he was not alone as the commemorative plaque on the Villa notes. He stayed there with Malwida von Meysenbug (1816-1903).

Now, I had already heard of Herzen. I became familiar with his name when watching a trilogy of plays by Tom Stoppard about 19th century Russian Socialism. However, I had never come across Malwida von Meysenbug until I saw that plaque in Ventnor. A writer, she was born in Kassel (Germany) and was a friend of both Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner.  By the time that Herzen and Malwida had their holiday in Augustine Villa, she was living with Herzen’s family and helping to look after his children. Alexander’s wife Natalia had died in 1852, and he had hired Malwida to educate his children.

Malwida was much more than a mere governess as the UCL academic Sarah J Young explained in her excellent, highly informative article (http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/11/10/in-herzens-footsteps-a-visit-to-ventnor/). In this essay, Dr Young gives excerpts from Malwida’s published “Memoirs”. The following is particularly interesting:

“We spent happy days in beautiful Ventnor. In the evenings we were usually with the Pulszkys, who were spending the summer there. Therese’s mother, an educated and intelligent Viennese lady, had come to visit them, and this made for many a pleasant hour with her keen humor and wit. The Kossuths were also there, and he was much more pleasant in a more intimate setting than he had been at the formal gatherings in London. At the time, our thoughts were preoccupied by the war Russia had started with Turkey. Herzen, more so than the others, was very excited. He prophesied the Russian defeat and wished for it, since he believed it would lead to the downfall of autocracy.”

The Kossuths, were members of the family of the Hungarian revolutionary Louis Kossuth, whom Herzen was extremely excited to have met during his stay in Ventnor. Another exiled Hungarian revolutionary, Ferenc Pulszky (1814-1897) was also staying with his family in Ventnor at the same time as the Herzens and the Kossuths. Pulsky’s wife, Theresa, and Malwida spent time drawing together in Ventnor, and made several competent sketches of Ventnor and its surroundings,

Dr Young also quoted Herzen, who noted in his diaries that Malwida:

“… spent all her time in the water …”

From what Dr Young and others have discovered during their research, Malwida was out of the sea long enough to create works of art depicting the seaside resort.

Herzen liked Ventnor but had some reservations as he wrote in a letter (quoted from Dr Young’s article):

“For three days the weather has been like June – and I’m bathing recklessly in the sea. But before that there were four days of storms, rain and bitter cold … If it were not so boring, I would live here, but there are no resources at all. And getting to Ryde is expensive … “

Many years have passed since Herzen and Von Meysenbug holidayed in Ventnor. Slightly less time has elapsed since the future Mahatma Gandhi visited Ventnor in 1890 and 1891. According to one source (www.bonchurchvillage.co.uk/post/bonchurch-gandhi), Gandhi:

“… had wanted to study medicine but his father had objected, and his studies were in law.   He was a prominent member of the London Vegetarian Society, and that may have led to his staying at Shelton’s Vegetarian Hotel at 25 Madeira Road in Ventnor, in January 1890 and again in May 1891, on the second occasion addressing a Vegetarian meeting in Ventnor.”

In his autobiography, Gandhi wrote of the following experience in Ventnor:

“My cowardice was on a par with my reserve. It was customary in families like the one in which I was staying at Ventnor for the daughter of the landlady to take out guests for a walk. My landlady’s daughter took me one day to the lovely hills round Ventnor. I was no slow walker, but my companion walked even faster, dragging me after her and chattering away all the while. I responded to her chatter sometimes with a whispered ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or at the most ‘yes, how beautiful!’ She was flying like a bird whilst I was wondering when I should get back home. We thus reached the top of a hill. How to get down again was the question. In spite of her high-heeled boots this sprightly young lady of twenty-five darted down the hill like an arrow. I was shamefacedly struggling to get down. She stood at the foot smiling and cheering me and offering to come and drag me. How could I be so chicken hearted? With the greatest difficulty, and crawling at intervals, I somehow managed to scramble to the bottom. She loudly laughed ‘bravo’ and shamed me all the more, as well she might.”

I do not think that Gandhi made any other visits to Ventnor or elsewhere on the Isle of Wight.

Today, Ventnor is still delightful and although much has been modernised since the Victorian era, it still retains an almost unspoilt old-world charm. I fancy that were it possible for Herzen and Malwida and their revolutionary friends to return today, they would find much in Ventnor that they would easily recognise.

Seeing the plaque on Augustine Villa made me curious about Herzen’s stay in Ventnor and the identity of Malwida von Meysenbug. By reading up about it, I learned of other noteworthy visitors to the town, and as I did so my interest in Ventnor has increased considerably.

PS: a list of some more of the famous visitors to Ventnor can be found at /www.ventnortowncouncil.gov.uk/about-ventnor/famous-residents/

Double-headed eagle in Dartmouth

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THE NATIONAL SYMBOL of Russia, both before and after the Communist era, is a bird with two heads, two necks, and a single body – the double-headed eagle (‘DHE’). I have long been interested in this imagined creature because it appears on the flag of Albania, a place that has interested me for many years.

While walking along the riverfront in Dartmouth (Devon), our friend pointed out a historic cannon positioned with its barrel pointing towards the water. On the top of the barrel there is a small bas-relief depicting a DHE.

The cannon was manufactured in the Russian city of Briansk in 1826. It was captured from the Russians in the Crimean War (1854-1856) and is one of several Russian cannons brought to England after or during that conflict.

We have visited Dartmouth many times before, but barely noticed the old cannon. Had our friend not told us of the origin of that cannon, one of many disused artillery pieces that can be found serving as ornaments all over England, I would have been unaware of this example of a double-headed eagle in Dartmouth.

The Kensington gravel pits

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JOHN LINNELL (1792-1882) painted the Kensington gravel pits in about 1811. The picture hangs in London’s Tate Britain These pits lay alongside Bayswater Road and Notting Hill Gate. They provided gravel for building projects in England and as far away as Imperial Russia.

Today, the pits no longer exist. They have been built over, but street names such as St Petersburg Place and Moscow Road commemorate the fortunes made by selling gravel from these pits to Russia.

You can discover more about this and much more about Paddington and Kensington and points further west in my book “BEYOND MARYLEBONE AND MAYFAIR: EXPLORING WEST LONDON” (see https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0B7CR679W/

Two empty pavilions at the Venice Biennale

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THE BIENNALE IN Venice was first held in 1895. The original international bi-annual art exhibition was contained in public gardens at the Eastern end of the city of Venice in the Castello district.

Initially, there was a Central Pavilion, opened in 1894. Later, various participating countries built national pavilions, the first being Belgium in 1907. The latest is the Australian pavilion, built only a few years ago.

The national pavilions reflect both the politics and architectural styles prevailing at the time they were built. Therefore, they are at least as interesting as the artworks that take up temporary residence within them at each exhibition.

I will discuss two of the pavilions in this short essay, and hope to write about some of the others at a later date.

The Russian pavilion bears the date 1914 and several double-headed eagles. It was constructed before the 1917 Revolution, and has some traditional Russian architectural features.

Next to the Belgian pavilion, stands the Spanish one. First constructed in 1933, its facade was replaced by a modern brick one in 1952.

Both the Spanish and the Russian pavilions appear to be empty, but for quite different reasons. For the 2022 Biennale, the artist Ignasi Aballi (born 1958 in Barcelona) has left the pavilion empty but shifted its internal walls in an attempt to correct a discrepancy between its original architectural plan and what ended up being constructed. The result is an empty pavilion with a strange internal layout. It was at first disconcerting to discover a pavilion empty of artworks, but soon it became pleasurable to see the strange vistas and connections between neighbouring rooms.

The Russian pavilion, unlike the Spanish, is closed. But it is also devoid of exhibits. Russia was not invited to the Biennale this year. The reason for this was Mr Putin’s unwise decision to invade his neibour, Ukraine.

A Soviet in Hampstead: Maxim Litvinov in north London

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Here is an excerpt from my new book about Hampstead in north London:

For many centuries, Hampstead has been the haunt of people involved in creative pursuits. So, it was no surprise that the former Express Dairy opposite Louis (patisserie) had at least one interesting cultural connection. In February 1916, the Bolshevik revolutionary Maxim Litvinov (1856-1951) proposed to his future wife Ivy Low in the café inside that branch of Express Dairy. Ivy, a novelist, was born, please note, in 1889 (she died in 1977). At the time he became acquainted with Ivy, Litvinov was with Lenin in London. Ivy did occasional typing for Maxim, and it was not long before they were attracted to one another. Passionate about cinema, he took her to watch films with him and one day he ‘popped the question’ in the Express Dairy. After they married, they lived in Hampstead until the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in October 1917. They did not return to Russia immediately because in January 1918 Maxim Litvinoff was made First Proletarian Envoy to the Court of St. James’s.

According to Zinovy Sheinis in his biography of Maxim first published in 1988, Maxim often went to Hampstead to meet his friends the Klyshkos, who lived on Hampstead High Street. Nikolai Klyshko (1880-1937) was a Bolshevik revolutionary of Polish parentage, who had settled in London and was a fluent Russian speaker.  For a brief period, Litvinov lived in Hampstead with Klyshko and his English wife. Sheinis wrote about Maxim’s meeting with Ivy:

“They had met at a friend’s house. Then at a gathering of the Fabian Society. Litvinov was impressed by her knowledge of Tolstoy and Chekhov. Putting on weight, red-haired, of average height, well-mannered, and not very talkative, he made a big impression on the young writer. Her mother, the daughter of a colonel in the British Army, naturally wanted a different match for her daughter and certainly did not want to see her married to an insecure emigre from Russia. As for his religious background, Ivy Lowe simply never gave it a thought. She was herself from a family of Hungarian Jews who had taken part in the Kossuth uprising; in her girlhood she had been a Protestant, then had been converted to Catholicism. The choice of religion was her private affair and concerned no one else.”

After their marriage, they lived in a house, owned by Belgian refugees, in Hampstead’s South Hill Park (number 86). While there, Sheinis related:

“Friends sometimes gathered there in the evenings to discuss the political news; then an argument would flare up, developing into a fierce squabble. It always seemed to Ivy that her husband and his guests would any moment start flinging chairs at one another. At the very height of the dispute, when it was almost at boiling-point, she would leave the kitchen, go into the room, and announce that tea or coffee was ready. The disputants would calm down and drink their tea in peace.”

He also wrote that Ivy:

“… was not interested in and did not understand the political activities of her husband and his friends. To her, it was an alien world. In London, after the October Revolution, she asked her husband if he knew Lenin. Maxim replied that he had known Lenin for a long time. But she had no idea that letters from Lenin were coming to their house and that her flat was the headquarters of Bolshevik emigres.”

Later, they lived in a tiny house in West Hampstead. After that, Litvinov, having become a Soviet diplomat, moved from Hampstead. Despite not being officially accredited by the British, Sheinis   noted:

“The Litvinovs were even invited to receptions. Though Soviet Russia was not yet recognised, its powerful influence reached standoffish London, Ivy Litvinova recollected.”

By 1921, the Litvinovs with their two young children, at least one of whom was born in Hampstead, settled in Moscow. Although Litvinov held high governmental posts in the Soviet Union and outside it (as a Soviet diplomat), he and Ivy, like so many other citizens in Stalin’s Russia, were constantly in fear of being arrested and/or killed.

My book about Hampstead, “BENEATH A WIDE SKY: HAMPSTEAD AND ITS ENVIRONS” is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09R2WRK92