Mrs Gilbert Russell Sitting in Bed
© the copyright holder. Image credit: Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Mrs Gilbert Russell Sitting in Bed

Boris Anrep (1883–1969)

Paintings Collection

(b St Petersburg, 28 Sept. 1883; d London, UK, 7 June 1969). Russian-born mosaicist and painter, active mainly in England. He organized the Russian section of Roger Fry's second Post-Impressionist exhibition in 1912 and after the First World War, in which he served in the Russian army, he settled in London, although he lived for a time in Paris after his wife left him for Fry in 1926. Anrep was deeply interested in Byzantine art and came to specialize in mosaic pavements, the best-known examples being in Tate Britain, representing William Blake's Proverbs (1923), and the National Gallery—four floors on and around the main staircase, executed between 1926 and 1952. The subjects are ‘The Awakening of the Muses’, ‘The Modern Virtues’, ‘The Labours of Life’, and ‘The Pleasures of Life’; portraits of many well-known contemporaries are incorporated in them, for example the philosopher Bertrand Russell representing Lucidity and the film actress Greta Garbo as Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy.

Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)

Artworks by Boris Anrep

  • Mrs Gilbert Russell Sitting in Bed
    Mrs Gilbert Russell Sitting in Bed Boris Anrep (1883–1969)
    Victoria and Albert Museum

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Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Artist in mosaic, born in St Petersburg, Russia, where he first studied law but then Byzantine art. Travelled widely and from 1908 studied in Paris at Académies Julian and La Grande Chaumière and at Atelier La Palette. In 1910–11 he was at Edinburgh College of Art under Frank Morley Fletcher. He was associated with Roger Fry’s Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912 and settled in England after World War I, although he later lived in Paris. Among his mosaics in public buildings are the National Gallery floors, Tate Gallery, Westminster Cathedral and Bank of England. The National Gallery mosaics were installed in four stages, 1929–52, entitled The Labours of Life, The Pleasures of Life, The Awakening of the Muses and Modern Virtues. They feature celebrities from the middle of the twentieth century, including Virginia Woolf, Diana Mitford, Winston Churchill, Margot Fonteyn, Loretta Young, Anna Akhmatova, T S Eliot, Bertrand Russell and Augustus John. In 2004, Lois Oliver’s Boris Anrep – The National Gallery Mosaics, published by the National Gallery, gave an account of their creation by Anrep, who said: “If there is any feeling of squeamishness in walking over august personages one can easily step around them.” Anrep also showed oil paintings at LG in early 1920s. The Anrep family is the subject of a notable painting by Henry Lamb.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)

Venues

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