Svinopas. Skazka Andersen. [The Swineherd. Andersen's Fairytale].

Dobuzhinsky was one of the great graphic artists of the Mir iskusstva [World of Art] group and Svinopas is considered to be one of his most accomplished works. Having served as a medical orderly on the Polish and Galician fronts during World War I, he began illustrating Andersen's tale as a distraction on his return to Petrograd in 1917. The story was one of his family's favourite fairy tales; a few years earlier, his friend Georgii Narbut designed the sets and costumes for a play based on the story for Dobuzhinsky's children. Dobuzhinsky entered these slightly satirical watercolours in one of the last of the Mir iskusstva exhibitions. The calligraphic illustrations with colour outlines and flat washes were inspired by the charm of the 19th century but also reflect his modernist style.

This edition was created for the 'Parus' publishing company, but the Russian Revolution intervened and the book was published until 1922 by Z. I. Grzhebin in Berlin and Petrograd. Inspiration was drawn from neo-classical Imperial Petersburg and