The plot now occupied by house No. 16 was acquired in 1898 by the decorative artist Ernest Karlovich Lipgart, one of the most outstanding specialists in the history of Renaissance painting, and from 1902 a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts. For him, according to the project of architect Ernest Frantsevich Virrih, a workshop and a two-story house were built here in 1898–1899 from hollow betonite blocks (the prototype of modern cinder concrete products), manufactured at the Gürtler factory. This was the first building (the service wing in the back yard has been preserved, later rebuilt) in St. Petersburg made from this new economical material.
The six-story house No. 16, on the southwest corner of Austrian Square, with a corner turret with an elegant finish, was erected according to the project of Vasily Vasilyevich Shauba in 1905–1906. The front facades of the house with the wing are executed in the style of late eclecticism with elements of Art Nouveau and decorated with abundant stucco and plaster decor. The balcony on shaped brackets with historic wrought iron railings adds sophistication to the architectural structure. The risalit of the house is adorned with a semicircular tower with a dome and spire, decorated with window openings and stucco Baroque compositions.
Ernest Karlovich Lipgart lived here until 1921 (he owned the house from 1905 to 1908). Lipgart was born in 1847 in Dorpat, studied painting in Venice, worked in Paris, where he created a gallery of portraits of Zola, Flaubert, Goncourt, Bernard, Wagner. He is widely known for his portrait of Turgenev.
He painted portraits of grand dukes and duchesses: Maria Pavlovna, Konstantin Konstantinovich, Alexei Alexandrovich, Nikolai Nikolaevich, Princess Altenburg, Duke of Leuchtenberg. He is the author of several portraits of Nicholas II, two of which are kept in the Russian Museum and two in the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo.
Curious memoirs were left by Lipgart’s family friend Selyavin, who captured the reception of Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich at the artist’s house.
“At the Lipgarts’, I had the chance to meet the General Admiral himself, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich, in an informal setting in 1905, when their new house and workshop were already ready. It was already the first hour, and since eleven o’clock the grand duke had been posing for a portrait in the workshop, having accepted the invitation to breakfast after the session. Thus, for the first time, I was to have breakfast in the ‘highest presence.’”
Portraits of composers Rubinstein and Donaur belong to Lipgart’s brush. In the House of Stage Veterans is kept a portrait of the singer Slavina in the role of the heroine of Saint-Saëns’ opera “Samson and Delilah,” painted by the artist. The Russian Museum holds Lipgart’s self-portrait, “The State Drawing Room in the Mikhailovsky Palace,” and other works. The Russian Museum also houses a portrait of the opera singer Skalkovskaya, executed by Lipgart. The Hermitage collections include a portrait of the artist’s daughter Lipgart, painted around 1910. Lipgart’s works are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery, and in museums of Riga, Tallinn, Tartu, Krasnodar, Saratov, Tashkent, and Ulyanovsk.
He headed professional courses at the Kseninsky Institute, taught a drawing class at the School under the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, and lectured on the history of Italian and Spanish painting at the Institute of Art History. From 1906 to 1929, Lipgart worked at the Hermitage as the chief curator of the Picture Gallery. On Lipgart’s initiative, the Hermitage acquired Palma the Younger’s painting “Apostles at the Tomb of Mary” and an early work by Tiepolo “The Rape of the Sabine Women,” then attributed to Ricci. Sensational attributions by the artist included Titian’s “Flight into Egypt” and El Greco’s “Apostles Peter and Paul.” In 1910, Perugino’s painting “Sebastian” was acquired. Lipgart facilitated the acquisition of the Semenov-Tyan-Shansky painting collection.
His personal collection included a sketch by Pierre Subleyras “Deacon” for the painting “Emperor Valentinian before Bishop Basil.” The sketch was made in the 1740s as a cartoon for a mosaic in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Lipgart owned a painting by the Dutch painter Dou, “Astronomer,” painted by the artist in 1628. These works were later donated by the owner to the Hermitage.
After 1917, Lipgart had to endure significant hardships and deprivations. In 1921, he lost his daughter, who was shot by the Bolsheviks in Omsk. In the same year, he was evicted from the house on Kamennoostrovsky. For some time, he lived in the House of Arts on Nevsky, and then in the Adamini house on Mars Field. In 1930, he was dismissed from the Hermitage due to staff reductions.
Lipgart died on March 31, 1932, and is buried at the Smolensky Cemetery.
The artist’s wife, Jeanne Konstantinovna von Lipgart (1854–1931), née Florentina Louisa Konstantina Jouanne, was a Parisian model. “Over decades, the beautiful brunette, a Provençal, Arlesian, or Gascon woman, managed to grow plump, become flabby, and turn from a frivolous butterfly into a stingy shrew with a beak-like nose and sagging chin,” wrote V.A. Milashevsky. “Many years later, when I illustrated Balzac’s ‘Father Goriot,’ her image surfaced in my mind, and I depicted her as the mistress of the ‘Vauquer House,’” the artist Milashevsky later recalled about Lipgart’s wife.
From 1909 until the revolution, the house was owned by hereditary honorary citizen Gutman. The building housed the Simson apothecary goods store. Before the revolution, merchant of the 1st guild Lesin, authorized representative of the banking house “G. Lesin,” lived here. In 1916, chamberlain Prince Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, a member of the Ministry of Internal Affairs council, lived here.
Here lived Actual State Councillor Bentkovsky, director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs department, member of the English Club.
The seventh floor of house No. 16 was occupied by the First Art Workshop of “Lenfilm,” led by Yutkevich. It was founded in 1935 when 36 young filmmakers signed a creative declaration of cooperation, thus marking the beginning of this workshop’s activity.
In this house, in apartment No. 42, was the workshop of artist Sokolov, who devoted more than half a century to the theme of labor and peace. He is the author of the book “Through the Eyes and Heart of an Artist,” published by Lenizdat in 1986, which contains about 50 portraits and labor biographies of workers from different generations. The artist died in August 1991.
Painter, graphic artist, and applied arts artist David Noevich Goberman lived in apartment No. 14 from 1929 to 2004. He received his artistic education at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture of the All-Russian Academy of Arts. He graduated from the architectural faculty in 1939. He studied drawing and painting under Tyrsa and participated in exhibitions since 1925. He is the author of landscapes of Leningrad and its surroundings (1935–1939, 1950s). He worked in decorative and applied arts, known as an art historian and author of books dedicated to various aspects of the visual folklore of the peoples of Ukraine and Moldova. He created a series of lithographs and monotypes dedicated to Moldova, as well as carpet sketches for Moldovan carpet enterprises.
In apartment No. 15, from 1918, lived the grandson of the Decembrist Pyotr Pavlovich Kaverin, N.F. Kaverin, a therapist at the Women’s Medical Institute. He died in 1921 and is buried at the Volkovo Cemetery. His daughter Alevtina Nikolaevna Kaverina was born here. Her room preserved the memory of Pyotr Kaverin, a graduate of Moscow and Göttingen universities, a participant in the 1812 war, to whom Pushkin dedicated the poems “Forget, my dear Kaverin” and “To the Portrait of Kaverin.”
Sources:
https://www.gov.spb.ru/gov/terr/reg_petrograd/news/263055/
https://sterh1973.livejournal.com/157787.html
https://www.citywalls.ru/house837.html
