Anna Petrovna Ostroumova-Lebedeva

Born May 5 (17), 1871, in St. Petersburg; died May 5, 1955, in Leningrad. Soviet engraver and watercolorist. People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1946). Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1949).

From 1892 to 1900, Ostroumova-Lebedeva studied under V. V. Mate and I. E. Repin at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1898 and 1899 she worked in the studio of James Whistler in Paris. She joined the World of Art group in 1899 and the Four Arts group in 1924. Known principally as a master of landscapes, she initiated the revival of original Russian wood engravings, colored as well as black-and-white. She is also known for her lithographs and watercolors.

Ostroumova-Lebedeva’s chief works, views of St. Petersburg and later of Leningrad and its surroundings, bring out the fusion of architecture with the natural environment. Their composition is clear, their coloring rich and natural, and their imagery poetic and unified. Examples are the series of wood engravings St. Petersburg (1908–10) and Pavlovsk (1922–23), the album of lithographs St. Petersburg (1922), and the watercolors The Field of Mars (1922, Tret’iakov Gallery) and The Engineers’ Castle Covered with Hoarfrost (1929, Russian Museum, Leningrad). Ostroumova-Lebedeva was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.