Mikhail RUNDALTZEFF (1871-1935) Nude playing cards Oil on canvas signed lower left 'Rundaltzeff'. 88 x 103 cm The man who in his lifetime painted the portraits of the Tsar of all the Russias, Lenin and the 29th president of the United States, Warren Harding. Rundaltzeff was born into a family of artisans in St. Petersburg, his father was a founder of medals and bas-reliefs. He studied lithography and etching at the Central School of Technical Drawing of Baron Shtiglits. Brilliant student, he starts to exhibit his works and to sell them to newspapers. His success and talent made him a famous lithographer and he was soon commissioned to make portraits of men of culture (including Rubinstein, Repin, Pushkin, Tolstoy or Turgenev), figures of the Petersburg nobility and the imperial family after the paintings in the Hermitage. He is one of the founders of the Union of Russian Art Industry. In 1917 he painted a portrait of Kerensky, and then in 1918 of Lenin, whose portrait was used to create a stamp bearing the effigy of this revolutionary! He participated in the first exhibition of Petrograd Artists in 1919. His works were also exhibited at the Van Diemen Gallery in Berlin in 1922. In 1920 he emigrated to the United States to Miami, continued his artistic activities and taught in New York, where he held a solo exhibition in 1930, where he painted the portrait of American President W. Harding. In 1930, he moved to Paris, where he died in 1935, he is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery. Expert : Cabinet Frédérick Pauline Chanoit