Cigarette Case with The Boyar

Rendered in repoussé is a boyar with a flowing beard seated in a painted enamel interior. This figure is based on Konstantin Makovskii's The Boyar, a painting now lost, which was executed in 1913 for the Tercentenary of the Russian Empire and was illustrated on the cover of Sol'ntse Rossii (The Sun of Russia), The ultimate source was the central figure in the same artist's The Boyar Wedding (1913), a sumptuous, festive scene set in the 17th century in which two wealthy boyar families are united by marriage (Hillwood Museum and Gardens, Washington, D.C.). The background in the room on the cigarette case may have been inspired by the late 16th-century Romanov Boyar House in Zaryadye, Moscow, which had recently been restored. Fedor Rückert repeated the figure of the old boyar on the lid of a Fabergé box, now in the Hillwood Museum and Gardens, Washington, DC. Engraved on the reverse of the case is the dedicatory inscription:
Na dobruiu pamiat' Carlzu Brus ot Tovarcshcheu sluzhivov Mezdunarodnoi Kompanii Omsk 13 Ferralia 1914 g (In Fond Memory to Carlz Bruce from the Comrades serving the Internationsl Company of Omsk. 13 February 1914).

Inscription

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

Jean M. Riddell, Washington, D.C. [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 2010, by bequest.