Icon painting of the Madonna and child

A Russian icon

In Russian Orthodox culture, painted icons like this one are placed together in a special part of the house.  Looked at, touched, prayed to and kissed, icons allow people to enter into direct communication with the divinity. They are included in all of life’s most significant moments, from birth to death.

Over time, particularly important and miraculous icons have been copied by generations of painters. This makes individual icons very difficult to date, although we think that this panel was probably painted in the late 18th or 19th century. It is modelled on the Kazan’ Mother of God – an extremely spiritual 16th-century Russian icon in which the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus are closely framed, their faces pressed tenderly together. Icons painted after the Kazan’ Mother of God are usually small and intimate. They are often considered protectors of the home.

Mary Chamot

This icon was bequeathed to Te Papa by the British art historian and curator Mary Chamot. Chamot was an art advisor to the National Art Gallery (now Te Papa) from 1965-75. In that time she greatly enhanced our collection of modern, international art.

Through Mary Chamot, the National Art Gallery acquired seven remarkable paintings by Russian artist Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962). Chamot was a specialist in 20th-century Russian art. She became friends with Goncharova in the 1950s and was a leading expert on her work. Four of Te Papa’s Goncharova paintings were given to the museum by Chamot herself.

Mary Chamot bequeathed this icon to the National Art Gallery in 1993. At the time the icon was described as late 16th or early 17th-century. It was acquired without any information about its provenance or history.
In 2022, the British art historian Dr Anthony Parton contacted Te Papa about the icon. Parton, who has published extensively on Goncharova’s work, became friends with Mary Chamot when he was a Phd student. [1] Chamot told him at the time that this was Natalia Goncharova’s own baptismal icon. According to Chamot it accompanied Goncharova throughout her life, travelling in suitcases from one destination to another until she settled in Paris in 1919, where she hung it over her bed.

Chamot told Parton that she had been given the icon after Goncharova’s death. She treasured the panel, considering it a link to her friend.

Natalia Goncharova and icon painting

Aside from this personal connection, icons like this one also relate to Natalia Goncharova’s paintings. From the late 19th-century, a number of Russian artists began looking to icons as a model for their work. For these painters, icons were a means of accessing something true and distinctively Russian. In 1919, during the Russian Revolution, artist, photographer and designer Aleksandr Rodchenko wrote: “Russian art has its origin in the icon.” [2]

Natalia Goncharova believed strongly in the power and importance of Russian art forms. She aimed to create modern art that drew on – and was intimately connected to – a distinctive, Russian culture. The forms, colours, and subjects of Goncharova’s paintings were influenced by peasant carving and embroideries, as well as by popular prints and icon painting. Goncharova also collected icons, organising an exhibition of them in Moscow in 1913.

A large number of Natalia Goncharova’s paintings use iconic subjects, including several paintings of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. Her flattened, colourful, non-naturalistic style of painting was influenced by icons. In some of her works, Goncharova elevated everyday Russian subjects to the status of icons. Her 1912 painting Rabbi with cat outraged the political and religious establishment by depicting a Jewish man in icon format.

This icon speaks to the fascination that both Goncharova and Mary Chamot had with these powerful, richly symbolic paintings, and with their history as a Russian artform.

References
[1] See: Anthony Parton, Goncharova : the art and design of Natalia Goncharova (Antique Collectors’ Club, 2010).
[2] Aleksandr Rodchenko quoted in Jefferson J.A. Gatrall, ‘Introduction’ in Jefferson J.A. Gatrall and Douglas Greenfield (ed.s), Alter icons. The Russian icon and modernity (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), p. 6