4487 - Afanasij Scheloumoff, Wolf Attack

Afanasij Scheloumoff, Wolf Attack In a snow-covered winter landscape, a horse-drawn cart carrying three men is travelling through the scene when it is attacked by a wolf from the right; on the left, another pack of wolves lies in wait; one of the men, armed with a shotgun, shoots another wolf, in the background, another horse-drawn cart is driving into the scene; an impressive painting, based on a popular motif by the Polish painter Alfred von Wierusz-Kowalski, who was based in Munich at the turn of the century and is known for this motif from his native Poland, oil on canvas, signed lower right, on the reverse a canvas stamp reading ‘Viktoria Maltuch München’ and a promotional label ‘Kunsthandlung Malerwinkel Braunschweig’, signs of age, frame dented, inner dimensions 60 x 90 cm. Artist information: real name Athanas Afanasij Ivanovic Scheloumoff, also Sheloumov; in Cyrillic: Афанасий Иванович Шелоумов, Ukrainian history, battle and genre painter and copyist (1892 Kamianets-Podilskyi [Каменец-Подольский] to 1983 Starnberg near Munich), from 1900 spent his childhood in Balta; 1904-08 private drawing lessons; 1908-12 studied at the Odessa Art School and the St Petersburg Academy under Nikolai Semenovich Samokish [Николай Семёнович Самокиш], subsequently undertook numerous study trips to rural areas of Ukraine; from 1914, served as a volunteer in the First World War; during the October Revolution of 1917, joined the White Army, In 1920, he fled via the Crimea to Yugoslavia, where he worked for a time in Bechkerek as a dyer and as a labourer in railway workshops; during this period, he produced copies of significant works of art and created his own compositions; he took part in the Second World War with the Serbian Army, as a vassal of Germany, In 1945, he fled from the Red Army via Austria to Starnberg near Munich; he exhibited his work in Munich, Starnberg, Stuttgart, Belgrade and Bolshiye-Becekerek, In 1982, he was made an honorary citizen of Starnberg. Source: Russian Wikipedia, Saur’s ‘Bio-Bibliographical Encyclopaedia of Artists’, Bruckmann’s ‘Munich Painters of the 19th/20th Centuries’ and the internet.