LUDMILLA PITOEFF
VIEW NOVEMBER 16, 2013
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November 22, 2009
Lot Number: 183
CHANA ORLOFF (RUSSIAN 1888-1968) Bust of Ludmilla Pitoëff, cast
after a model created in 1924 bronze height: 53 cm (20 7/8 in.),
length: 33 cm (13 in.), width: 20 cm (7 7/8 in.) [excluding base]
signed Ch. Orloff on back numbered ‘1/8,’ with a Susse Fondeur Paris
foundry mark bust mounted on a marble base
Fig.1 Comparable photograph of Ludmilla and Georges Pitoëff
The subject of the bust, Ludmilla Pitoëff, was a fascinating figure of
Parisian society. Born Ludmilla Smanov in Tbilisi on December 25, 1895,
Ludmilla married fellow actor Georges Pitoëff, a well known actor and
producer of the French theatre, in Paris in 1915. Georges came from
an illustrious and wealthy family of Armenian industrialists from
Tbilisi who owned and operated “Pitoëff & Co.,” a holding company
specializing in oil exploration and refinement, as well as fish
and caviar manufacturing. The original Pitoëff family was highly
involved with the arts and quite influential, Georges’ father being
the director of the Tiflis Opera theatre and a major contributor to
the rise of Feodor Chaliapin, who began his career in Tbilisi.
In France, Georges and Ludmilla Pitoëff staged numerous theatrical
productions of Shaw, Ibsen, and especially of Russian playwrights
such as Chekhov, whose plays they effectively made a staple of
French theatrical repertoire. Georges would produce and direct the
productions, and Ludmilla would star in them. She was noted for her
powerful stage presence. The writer Jean Nepveu-Degas, nephew of artist
Edgar Degas, described Ludmilla in the following way after seeing her
in a production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, ‘le mince visage pâle,
le regard devorant, la frele silhouette claire et la voix pathetique’
(trans: ‘The thin pale face, the ravenous gaze, the frail distinct
silhouette and the voice full of pathos’).
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Estimate: $20,000 – 30,000
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
