Here's another story from a letter to the Editor of "Our Heritage" (Published HH. 1990. № 5).
"Stockholm, March 1990
I want to talk about "Portrait of a Boy", the famous artist brush Valentina Khodasevich. The picture is wonderful: the background of the sea on a bright sunny day, shows a boy of ten years in the white panamke and a striped blue and white shirt, and behind - transparent souls sky. A boy named Edgar, or a diminutive, Garik and he was the son of Anna Ivanovna Chulkovo (known in literary circles as the pre-revolutionary Moscow Nura Chulkov), sister of the writer George Ivanovich Chulkov. In 1911, Anna, mother of Edgar, became acquainted with the poet Vladislav Khodasevich and became his wife. By the way, above all, it concerns the painful poet was obliged to its relative prosperity in the years of famine. In 1922 Khodasevich left Russia - Anna stayed in Moscow.
Valentina Khodasevich, the artist was the niece of the poet, and a portrait of the son of Anna Ivanovna Chulkovo said she remembers, with a love. Then, when the boy grew, he became a movie actor, known under the pseudonym Edgar Garik. That Edgar Garik starred in the role of the Swedish King Karl XII in the famous film director Petrov "Peter" on the script by Alexei Tolstoy.
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But to return to the portrait. He got his time in Moscow lawyer and collector Nicholas Mironovich Tereshkovich, husband of Vera Veniaminovna Stoklitskoy Tereshkovich-known Soviet historian, medievalist, a great connoisseur of medieval western city. In the last years of her life, when already widowed and retired, with her because of interest and close proximity befriended my husband - also a historian. Incidentally, Stoklitskaya tried to bequeath their savings to the history faculty of Moscow State University with a condition to establish a scholarship for the best student of the Middle Ages, but her charitable impulse of support at the university had not received - personal scholarships were exclusively Stalin or Lenin.
So, it was Vera Veniaminovna gave in 1959 "Portrait of a Boy" to my husband. This prompted her, apparently, the fact that the author's portrait accounted aunt to her husband, though canvas stayed in our house not long: Anna Chulkov, hearing this, begged her to give a picture that you promised to return after her death, according to testament. My husband took a portrait of himself in the family one-story mansion Chulkov on the Garden Ring near Zubovskaya Square, where the artist was still living in the house of his brother, a writer, a very unusual house, completely lined by cells with parrots and canaries.
In autumn 1964 we were told that Anna had died and refused, kept his promise, a portrait of her husband. Thus, "Portrait of a Boy" has returned to us in a communal apartment in Starokonyushny Lane. The portrait hung on the wall of our room, narrow as a pencil case, and high as the cathedral. I loved waking up in the morning, look at it further in the window at the sky, which was widely seen, until then, until the contrary has not grown pink-beige house the Central Committee, contemptuous sideways to our "old man" of the last century.
At the boy in panamke I looked with tenderness and sadness. In the living there was no longer a boy and none of those to whom we were obliged to present - neither his mother nor Stklitskoy nor Khodasevich-artist, nor Khodasevich-poet. It seemed that the boy looks at me with her eyes all gone.
And yet, I confess, the usual lack of money for us next, I easily persuaded her husband to take it to the commission store - the same shop on Old Arbat Street between the barber and the "military book", which is subsequently erased from the face of the Arbat bulldozer: in its place and still a gaping void, through which the visible gray cracked Designator house prewar masonry. Portrait taken reluctantly, and was worth only 40 rubles. And now clearer than ever that one of the rare portrait of the wonderful Khodasevich took my husband for nothing.
From time to time retelling the story in a friendly circle, and finally be forgotten, moreover, that in 1987 my husband and son emigrated. Now living in Sweden, her husband teaches, the son of working and studying in high school for adults. Over the border in neighboring countries who they or a family in Moscow.
Last summer 1988 we stayed with friends in Copenhagen. Denmark, I must say, an unusually friendly towards Russia, its traditional ally in former times. Maybe that's why this great success the Soviet Exhibition "Time for a Change, 1905 - 1930. Russian avant-garde from Private Collections "by placing in the bottom of the capital's palaces - Charlottenburg. With great excitement I went to this exhibition, as if something had been anticipating. And this foreboding has not changed me. As if seeing nothing, I went to the very back wall of these as "communicating vessels", halls. That's where we hung a portrait. The boy looked all the same sad eyes, as if from an era that will never come back. Moreover, we met again to leave, probably forever. I recorded the name of the collector - VA Dudakov, and several months later to find him, being in Moscow and spoke with him by phone. It turns out that a collector bought the portrait a few years ago with the sale of the collection of another Muscovite - YM Rubinstein.
What I would like to say more? I guess what I'm really glad: the picture was in good hands of a true connoisseur of painting. I'm overseas, I always remember about this portrait, when the pass in Stockholm by the monument to Karl XII. For some reason, always wonder how cool he looked like in the movie "Peter I» our Edgar Garik on militant Swedish rabbit.
A. CAN.
P.S.
In November 1994, at the next (23 th in a row) auction company "ALFA-ART" was put up for sale 74 works, including many works already known for exhibitions and publications. Among them was listed and "Portrait of a Boy" Khodasevich ($ 15 000-17 000).
Is this the boy and in whose safe hands, he is now - history is silent. It is known for only one thing: "The boy was!" In the collection of VA Dudakova.