Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are delighted to offer for sale this wonderfully characterised oil painting on canvas by the Russian/British artist Alexei Jawdokimov, who has signed the painting in the lower right hand corner and dated it 1988. He has entitled in verso on the stretcher 'Old Montague Street, London E1. The painting depicts a scene in the Jewish area of Whitechapel in the late 19th, early 20th Century. There are two Jewish men in the foreground, with long beards and black hats, who are standing outside a poulterers shop. To the right are some stalls selling produce from barrows, and a stall outside a delicatessen with barrels of pickles in front of it.

Alexei Jawdokimov was born in 1937 in Smolensk in Russia and was brought up on a collective farm. He became a refugee during the last war, along with his mother, who was a professional dancer in Russia. She danced for the British troops in a refugee camp and eventually she and the young Alexei ended up, in 1947, on a large estate in Somerset, where she had obtained a job as a housekeeper. Alexei became a naturalised British citizen in 1955.

Alexei trained to become an illustator and designer at Somerset College of Art in Taunton and started a three year course there in 1954, with a short break in Canada in 1956, where he had won an RAF Scholarship to learn to fly. He settled in London in 1958, where he formed a Russian Cossack Dance Troupe, which toured Britain. He also worked as an illustrator and produced book jackets for Corgi and Collins and record covers for EMI, Decca and Pan Records.

He also began to act and played minor parts on Television including roles in The Russia House, Isadora Duncan and Love Hurts. Film roles followed and he acted alongside Larry Hagman and Sean Connery. He has appeared in The Tamarind Seed, The Music Lovers, The Eagle has Landed and Savage Messiah.

As well as his film career, Alexei's primarily his painting and he exhibited every weekend on the Hyde Park railings in Bayswater. His film roles gave him scope to paint many parts of the UK and the world. He has developed his own style and paints many scenes of the people and landmarks of London, the city where he has lived with his family for many years. Many of his paintings are available in print form and there is a wealth of information on google, including photographs of Alexei and examples of his work.

Auction records achieved for his works are available on the usual sites, but the record, in recent years, for one of his paintings this size of a similar scene is £1,039 in 2008 in Germany.

His agent has persuaded him to paint different subject under the pseudonym of Nicolai Volutin, where he paints wildlife and Russian scenes.

The painting is newly framed in a 3 1/2" gilt frame which suits it very well. It is ready to hang.

Medium Oils on canvas