Boris Godounov.

Vasiliy Shukhaev was a member of Mir Isskustva and studied under master draughtsman, Dmitry Kardovsky. Along with other influential members of the movement such as Benois and Somov, Shukhaev was inspired by the paintings of Watteau and Fragonard. Although closely associated with Russian avant-garde painters, Shukhaev be it consciously or unconsciously fought against their extremism.

For his illustrations for Boris Godunov, Shukhaev drew inspiration from icon painting traditions of the 16th-17th centuries, combining it with the dramatic shapes and bold colours typical for Russian art from Paris in the 1920s. The striking planar compositions are beautifully achieved in pochoir and the present example is exceptionally bright.

This was the second work from Jacques Schiffrin and Shukhaev after their first collaboration La Dame de Pique (1923) was such a great success. Schiffrin was born in Baku and fled the Russian Empire after the Revolution. He began publishing works in Paris as he was about literature and went on to translate Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Turgenev himself.