Boris Vasilyevich Anrep was a Russian mosaicist active in Britain, who devoted himself to the art of mosaic. In Britain, he is known for his monumental mosaics at the National Gallery, London, Westminster Cathedral and the Bank of England. In Ireland, he is known for his mosaics at Christ the King Cathedral, Mullingar. In Russia, he is associated with the Silver Age of Russian Poetry as the addressee of many beautiful poems by Anna Akhmatova.
Background
Ethnicity:
The Anrep family, originally from Westphalia, belonged to Swedish and Russian nobility and numbered a few renowned army officers in 16th-19th centuries.
Boris Vasilyevich Anrep was born on September 27, 1883 in Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation. His father, Vassily von Anrep, professor of forensic medicine, occupied high positions in the ministries of education and of interior and was elected in 1907 to the Russian parliament, the Duma.
Education
From 1899 to 1901 Boris Vasilyevich went to school in Kharkov, where he first met Nikolay Nedobrovo, and spent the summer of 1899 in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, learning English. From 1902 he studied in Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg and graduated in 1905. The same year he met Yunia Khitrovo, whom he married three years later.
Boris Vasilyevich studied in the law department of Saint Petersburg University. In 1906 he was enlisted in Lifeguard Dragoon regiment as a one-year volunteer, in 1907 was dismissed in reserve as an ensign.
After Nedobrovo introduced him to the painter Dmitri Stelletsky, Boris Vasilyevich began to be interested in art. In 1908 Boris abandoned his law studies in Saint Petersburg University, left for Paris to study art and enrolled at the Académie Julian (classes of J.-P. Laurens). He attended also Académie de La Palette and Académie de la Grande Chaumière. This was followed by a year at the Edinburgh College of Art in 1910–1911.
Career
In 1912, Boris Vasilyevich worked with the art critic Clive Bell on Roger Fry's second Post-Impressionist exhibition. He was in charge of the Russian section and presented pictures by Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, and Nicholas Roerich.
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Boris Vasilyevich went to serve as an officer in the Russian army and fought in Galicia till 1916. In April 1917 he was called back to London as Military Secretary to the Russian Government Committee and never returned to Russia.
Having travelled to Italy with Stelletsky in 1904 and been enthralled by the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, Boris Vasilyevich settled on the idea of making mosaics himself. His first success was the hall of the woman artist Ethel Sands' house in Chelsea, London: a dark turquoise blue floor with Byzantine characters (1917) and the walls, with portraits of Lytton Strachey, his companion Dora Carrington, and Virginia Woolf in male costume (1920).
Another commission was the vestibule in 35, Upper Brook St Mayfair for Sir William Jowitt, showing Various Moments in the Life of a Lady of Fashion (1922). Lesley Jowitt was shown telephoning in bed, in her bath, and at a nightclub.
The mosaics Christus Militans and The Vision of St. John were made for the chapel at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (1921). Eight panels, illustrating "The Proverbs of Hell" from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake, decorated the octagonal room at the Tate Gallery (1923).
In 1926 the trustees of Saint Sophia, Bayswater commissioned Boris Vasilyevich to execute a major set of mosaics in the sanctuary of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral. He settled on a scheme depicting the incarnation of Christ and the mystery and celebration of the Eucharist. His design takes full use of its Byzantine domes. The prothesis apse vault contains a semi-circular Nativity on its ceiling, using an individual composition. The diaconal apse depicts the Hospitality of Abraham from the Old Testament. At the summit of the vault are trios of angels celebrating the chalice of the Eucharist. The figures are simplified with rigid folds in Byzantine style. Gold tesserae sparkle between blocks of colour. The mosaic is harmonious with the structure, designed by Barry in the 1880s.
Boris Vasilyevich was invited back to decorate further sections of the cathedral between 1932 and 1956. This includes full length figures of the Major Prophets and busts of the Minor Prophets. In the west arch he depicted Saint Nicholas and Saint Christopher with the Christ Child, both protectors of the seafarers and travellers of the congregation, a community that was closely associated with shipping and trading.
Boris Vasilyevich also realised two attractive mosaics of Saint Anne and Saint Patrick within the Cathedral of Christ the King Mullingar. The Cathedral was realised from 1933 to 1939 by Byrne and sons.
Boris Vasilyevich created four colourful mosaics, which decorate the imposing staircase built by Sir John Taylor in 1887 for the entrance hall of the National Gallery. The mosaics were paid for by private patrons, mainly the industrialist Samuel Courtauld and Anrep's friend Maud Russell, wife of the banker Gilbert Russell.
Personality
Boris Vasilyevich Anrep wrote poetry in Russian and in English, influenced by English romantics, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Blake. His narrative poem Fiza was read in 1913 in author's absence in St. Petersburg and gave its name to the Society of Poets, which included Anna Akhmatova, her husband Nikolay Gumilyov, and Osip Mandelstam and became the centre of Acmeism, a new trend in Russian poetry.
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Boris Vasilyevich went to serve as an officer in the Russian army and fought in Galicia till 1916. Before joining the ranks, he visited Nedobrovo in Tsarskoe Selo and was introduced to Akhmatova, who lived nearby. They met continually during Anrep's short vacations in Saint Petersburg. Boris Vasilyevich described their relationship as a warm friendship, but for Akhmatova it was intensely important and inspired over 30 poems, which trace the passage of their affair from her early hopes and dreams to her bitter disappointment at their parting.
In April 1917 Boris Vasilyevich was called back to London as Military Secretary to the Russian Government Committee and never returned to Russia. The same year, Akhmatova used a line from Fiza as an epigraph to her book White Flock. For many years, they did not communicate. Their last meeting occurred in Paris in 1965, when Akhmatova returned home after receiving the honorary degree from Oxford University, shortly before her death.