Nicholas Roerich, 'White and Heavenly", Estimate: £150,000-200,000, Christie's

Russian Art Week will once again take center stage in the British capital in late May and early June in a demonstration of the unifying power of art. London continues to be a hub for Russian art and culture. The fair takes place 29 May - 5 June and will include major sales of Russian art at the leading auction houses accompanied by a varied program of Russian cultural events.

Last November's Russian Art Week saw several highlights, including the sale of Valentin Serov's 1910 Portrait of Maria Zetlin at Christie's which sold for £9.2 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold in a Russian art sale. The international situation makes it difficult to forecast the results of upcoming sales, but it's likely that major quality works by significant artists with good provenance will continue to do well.

The upcoming Russian Art Week will provide a great opportunity to discover new names as well as to enjoy the classics. The major auction houses continue to offer remarkable Russian art works and this summer is no exception. Bonhams will present Voilier et coquillage, a late still-life by Alexandra Exter, a delicately painted landscape by Ivan Pokhitonov, and an early 20th century Moscow-made silver-gilt presentation kovsh - an oval shaped traditional Russian drinking vessel - decorated with shaded cloisonné enamel.

Alexandra Exter, "Voilier et coquillage", 1935. Estimate: £200,000-300,000, Bonhams

Christie's will offer several unique pieces of decorative art, including a lavishly decorated two-color gold-mounted guilloché enamel desk clock, a wonderful example of the two most popular techniques used by the Fabergé workshop. Painting highlights of the upcoming sale at Christie's include Arsenal Hill at night (1907-1908), a rare work by Niko Pirosmani, the proclaimed Georgian Primitivist artist and a unique group of four works by Filipp Malyavin, including a large work in oil Baba on a swing. The provenance of Malyavin's work can be traced to the daughter of the artist and serves as a magnificently vivid example of Malyavin's beloved peasant scenes, which showcases the beauty of the Russian countryside.

Filipp Maliavin, "Baba on a Swing". Estimate: £150,000-200,000, Christie's

 Two magnificent masterworks by Nicholas Roerich presented at the sale also deserve a special mention: White and heavenly from the series His Country and The Host of Gesar Khan, both reflect themes inspired by Roerich's Central Asian expedition.

Hosting three sales of Russian art in June, Sotheby's will offer a diverse selection of Russian art from the 19th and 20th centuries, including an oriental landscape by Ivan Aivazovsky, Evening in Cairo, 1870, and a gouache by Pavel Tchelitchew, Bullfight, 1934. With a special focus on Russian decorative art, the dedicated sale's highlights include an Imperial silver-gilt and cloisonné enamel triptych icon, 1886, by Khlebnikov, presented to Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, later Emperor Nicholas II, as well as an Imperial hardstone figure of a parrot by Denisov-Uralski, St Petersburg, made in 1913-1914 for Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna.

Pavel Tchelitchew, "Bullfight", 1934. Estimate: £170,000-250,000, Sotheby's

 At auctioneers MacDougall's two charming depictions of Russian nature by well-known masters will be presented - Autumn on the Krestovsky Island, 1892, by Ivan Shishkin and Spring in a Village, 1920, by Konstantin Korovin, in which both masters succeed in conveying the intimacy of nature in Russia. Among other impressive lots are works by two Russian émigré artists - Pavel Tchelitchew's Portrait of My Father, 1939, and Nikolai Fechin's Peasant Woman Sitting on a Trunk, circa 1910.

Ivan Shishkin, "Autumn on Krestovsky Island", 1892, Estimate: £600,000-900,000, MacDougall's

In addition to the auctions, a program of Russian cultural events will take place across London. To celebrate Russian Art Week at Erarta Galleries Tishkov brings his Private Moon to London for the first time since 2013. 

Another London gallery Brun Fine Art will showcase a collection of Russian art by exhibiting, among other objects, a beautiful pair of 19th century armchairs in gilt bronze and faux malachite and a fine 19th century gilt bronze and malachite ink set.

Other exhibitions include Tate Modern's show dedicated to 20th century Russian émigré Sonia Delaunay, a leading abstract painter and Pushkin House's photography exhibition of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer James Hill, Russian Veterans, marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Studio Voltaire will present a show of works by Sanya Kantarovsky called Apricot Juice and inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov's enigmatic novel The Master and Margarita.

A range of concerts and performances will complement the visual arts program of Russian Art Week. The renowned singer Hibla Gerzmava will present a selection of the best Italian and Russian opera at Opera Holland Park. On the South Bank pianist Alexei Volodin will be making an appearance at Queen Elizabeth Hall and English National Opera will present The Queen of Spades, a new production of Tchaikovsky's dramatic opera about greed and obsession.

Read all the Auction highlights in the June Newsletter.

Alexei Savrasov, The Volga near Yurievets, oil on canvas, Estimate: £1,400,000-  1,800,000

A lost masterpiece by the Russian landscape painter Alexei Savrasov, The Volga near Yurevets, will be offered as one of the star lots of Sotheby's Russian Pictures sale on 2nd June 2015. Last exhibited in 1871, the work was known only from a black and white photograph until its rediscovery in France last year. Widely considered one of Savrasov's finest paintings and documented extensively in the literature on the artist, it is his most important work to appear at auction (est. £1.4-1.8 million). 

Jo Vickery, International Director of Russian Art 'The reappearance of this landmark work by one of the masters of 19th century Russian art is momentous. Had the work entered a Soviet museum collection in the 20th century it would likely have become a well-loved and famous icon of 19th century Russian landscape painting. 

One of the real privileges and excitements of handling Russian art is the number of long-lost paintings which resurface on the market many decades, if not a century, since they were last seen. This summer our pre-sale exhibition in London will unveil not only 'The Volga near Yurevets' for the first time, but a number of other works not seen in public for generations.' 

"The Volga near Yurevets", Depicts barge-haulers working along the River Volga beneath an advancing storm, The Volga near Yurevets was first unveiled in February 1871 to great critical acclaim at the annual prize contest of the 'Moscow Society of Art Lovers'. Winning the artist first prize in the landscape section, the painting remained on permanent exhibition in Moscow throughout the year. 

This was Savrasov's first large scale composition on the subject of the Volga river. The painting heralded the beginning of a celebrated series of Volga landscapes in the 1870s after he moved to Yaroslavl with his family. This was Savrasov's golden decade when he painted his best works, including The Rooks Have Returned (1871) which brought him widespread fame. 

An inscription on the reverse indicates the painting was once in the collection of Vladimir Fedorovich Mering, the youngest son of Friedrich Mering (1822-1887), a German professor at the Kiev University and a leading doctor of his time. A wealthy man, Vladimir Fedorovich collected furniture and paintings and is known to have donated Nesterov's On the Mountains (1896) to the Museum of Russian Art in Kiev in the 1920s. Savrasov's greatest achievement as an artist was in pioneering a whole new national landscape art, sidestepping the moribund conventions of the Academic salon and creating for the very first time monumental and enduringly beautiful images of Mother Russia in all her different moods and seasons. Savrasov sought to reveal something essential about the daily life and character of the provincial Russian people through vignettes and traces of contemporary human existence scattered through the landscape. 

Barge-haulers were a popular subject for several Russian artists including Ilya Repin and Vasily Vereshchagin in the 1860's and 1870's. They became something of a symbol of social injustice following the long awaited and disappointing serf reforms of Tsar Alexander II's reign.  

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