A Russian Master in Britain

Strange as it may seem, the most important British mosaic artist of the twentieth century was born in Russia.

Boris Vasilyevich Anrep was born in St. Petersburg in 1883. His father, Count Vassily von Anrep, was an aristocrat and a member of the Russian civil service who reported directly to Tsar Nicholas II. In the natural order of things, Boris would have followed in his footsteps, but of course things turned out much different.

In 1899, as a teenager, Boris Vasilyevich was sent to study English at Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. Then, from 1899-1901 he went to school in Kharkov, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. It was in Kharkov that Anrep met Nikolai Nedobrovo, who was later to become an important literary critic in St. Petersburg.

As the son of an aristocrat, Anrep would have visited many grand, Russian Orthodox churches, and there may have been churches he regularly attended where he saw beautiful mosaics. In fact, The discovery of mosaics in the eleventh century Ukrainian cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev motivated the tsar to create a mosaic workshop. This ultimately resided in St. Petersburg, and was supervised by the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. Though there is no record of it, it is possible that the young Anrep may have known about the workshop, and even had some involvement with it.

In any event, before he became committed to art and mosaics, Anrep studied law at the St. Petersburg Imperial School of Jurisprudence. During this time his friend Nedobrovo introduced him to Dmitry Stelletsky, a Russian painter and sculptor eight years his elder. Anrep was already leaning towards poetry, for which he had shown some talent, but, through his association with Stelletsky, Anrep also became serious about art.

In 1904, Stelletsky and Anrep set off on a tour that included Russia, Northern Italy and France. In Ravenna, they saw the ancient Roman mosaics and the Byzantine mosaics depicting Justinian and Theodora. Anrep marvelled at what he saw, and was utterly enchanted by the mosaics there. The journey became a catalyst that persuaded him to become not only an artist, but one devoted to creating mosaics.

In 1905, Anrep completed his law studies and began teaching law. Yet by 1908 he had moved to Paris and dedicated himself to the study of art, training in the Académie Julian, on the Rue du Dragon. There Anrep met the English painters Augustus John and Henry Lamb, and the French painter Pierre Roy. In 1909 the Russian literary journal Apollon was inaugurated, and Anrep became its Paris arts correspondent. After Paris, he moved to Scotland, where he attended the Edinburgh College of Art from 1910 to 1911, to study painting techniques.

In 1911, Anrep found his way to London, where he met up again with Henry Lamb and Augustus John. Through them, he became acquainted with the Bloomsbury set of Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Clive and Virginia Bell, and Virginia Woolf.

The translation and publication of the classics of Russian literature into English, combined with the dazzling success of the Ballets Russes, made Russian culture a hot item around this time. Clearly, Anrep was in the right place at the right time, being not only a cultured Russian, but one who could express himself and his opinions quite clearly in English. Bloomsbury was made for him, and he relished it.

With the beginning of World War I, however, Anrep was called up to military service and returned to Russia. He held the rank of Reserve Cavalry Officer and fought in Eastern Carpathia with a troop of Cossacks. During this time, he met with a wonderful young Russian poet whom Nikolai Nedobrovo had written to him about several times: Anna Akhmatova, who lived in Tsarskoye Selo, just outside St. Petersburg.

Given Anrep’s amorous nature, and their mutual love of poetry, it seems probable that they had a passionate affair; Akhmatova is said to have referred to it as “seven days of love” and then “endless separation.” Anrep dedicated poems to her and Akhmatova dedicated many poems to him, some thirty of which have been identified, mainly written between 1915 and 1923.

In 1917, Anrep returned to London as a military secretary and assistant legal adviser to the tsar. But when the Russian Revolution unfolded, it became clear that Anrep had little reason to return home, especially since his father had been a highly placed official in the tsar’s government.

So Anrep settled in England and began to slowly win contracts to create mosaics, first for his Bloomsbury friends, and then, in 1923, for the museum now known as Tate Britain. His mosaic scenes from one of William Blake’s most famous illustrated poems, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” were a huge success and led to two major contracts, one for The National Gallery of England and the other for the Bank of England. These were large, important works which took him years to create, but they established his position as the most important mosaic artist in the country.

As David Tootill, chairman of the British Association for Modern Mosaic, put it, “Boris Anrep ran a successful mosaic studio producing some of the twentieth century’s finest mosaic works, using classical techniques with contemporary designs. He held up the flame for an art form which during his time was unfashionable, making his achievement all the greater. Through unwavering determination, brilliance and social flair he secured mosaic art for the future, delighting the millions of visitors who see his work every year.”

In the 1950s, Anrep created more mosaics for the new Bank of England building at New Change, just across from St. Paul’s Cathedral. He also modified some that had been created for the original Bank of England building but were never implemented due to the war. These consisted of medallions of William and Mary, and the figure of Ariel, a symbol of the Bank. The Bank also ordered a portrait mosaic for the new monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

Anrep and his assistants came to London in 1955 to lay and finish the work. Anrep’s portrait of the monarch in mosaic in profile was intended to give the effect of a coin face, but it became one of the most beautiful representations made of her at that time.

The Bank had clearance from her Majesty to have her face represented as a large floor mosaic, but the aging Anrep departed from his Bloomsbury-fed irreverence and became peevish about people walking on the queen’s image. That he had become a British citizen just after the end of World War ll may have contributed to his concern. He suggested that four bronze posts, linked together by a velvet cord, might be used to shield the royal visage from stiletto heels and muddy boots. The bank ignored his precautions.

The Bank’s New Change building was demolished in 2007. Fortunately, some of the mosaics, including the Queen, and William and Mary, were preserved in the lower level of the new site – a shopping center topped by offices called One New Change, where they can still be viewed. The arcade, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, is located across from St. Paul’s Cathedral in central London.

Anrep would surely have been pleased that his image of the Queen is now mounted on a wall, rather than in a floor. RL