Over the past five years, Russian painting has become one of the fastest-growing and highest-grossing auction categories. As prices for works by artists like Natalia Goncharova and Alexander Yakovlev increased by more than 600 percent, annual sales in the category soared from $52 million in 2003 to $272 million in 2007. But the mediocre numbers generated by November’s London sales, which typically account for more than one-third of the annual total earned by Russian-art auctions, revealed a hard truth: Just as Russia’s financial markets have been infected by the global economic crisis, so have the country’s artworks suffered the same corrections that are leveling out the prices of other categories.

Bonhams did its best to warm up the crowd on the afternoon of November 24 with 250 lots of 19th- to 21st-century paintings. Works from the early 20th century performed moderately well: Kandinsky’s figurative Au bord de la mer, 1903 (est. £100-150,000; $149-224,000), promoted as the sale highlight, fetched a respectable £120,000 ($179,000), and a serene winter scene done in 1926 by Goncharova (est. £150-200,000; $224-299,000) stole the show, bringing the session’s high price of £150,000 ($224,000). When the auctioneer came to the contemporary works, however, bidding ground to a halt. Of the 48 postwar lots offered, only nine found buyers.

That evening Sotheby’s broke out its 55 choicest lots, opening with View of Constantinople in Moonlight (est. £120-180,000; $194-291,000), by Ivan Aivazovsky, a 19th-century painter who often leads off in the Russian sales. The picture brought £181,250 ($271,000), a fair price for a rather uninspired canvas. The first real excitement arrived a few lots later, as Vasili Polenov’s exotic Egyptian Girl, 1876 (est. £250-300,000; $373-448,000), tripled its high estimate to bring £1,049,250 ($1.6 million) from the Moscow gallerist Natalia Kournikova, bidding on behalf of a Moscow collector. Kournikova, who proved to be the most active bidder of the week, also snapped up an exquisite snow-covered landscape from 1919 by Boris Kustodiev (est. £100-150,000; $149-224,000) for £133,250 ($199,000).

Another discerning buyer at the Sotheby’s session was Georgy Putnikov, the vice president of Moscow’s Confederation of Art and Antique Dealers. After battling for and winning Boris Anisfeld’s Flowering Tree (est. £180-250,000; $269-373,000), a depiction of a tree spilling over with white blossoms done in the early 1900s, for £481,250 ($719,000), he snared a second prize: The Staircase (est. £100-150,000; $149-224,000), a fascinating perspectivist work from the mid-1920s by Leonid Chupyatov for which he paid £253,250 ($378,000). Putnikov was less lucky with Nikolai Roerich’s The Command, 1917, which soared past his paddle — and its high estimate of £350,000 ($523,000) — to sell for £1,105,250 ($1.7 million) to an anonymous phone bidder.

The superlative performance of The Command was the exception, however, not the rule. Many of the works that were expected to bring the highest sums, such as Mikhail Larionov’s undated Still Life with Plate (est. £600-800,000; $896,000-1.2 million) and a 1912 watercolor by Leon Bakst estimated to go for between £400,000 and £600,000 ($597-896,000), failed to sell. Despite the session’s less-than-stellar showing, the postsale mood was one of relief. Auctioneer Lord Mark Poltimore toured the room congratulating the few buyers he could find. One of these struck a patriotic note, proclaiming, "No crisis in Russia!"

It may indeed be premature to cry "crisis," but the similarly lackluster results at Christie’s the next day affirmed that the Russian-art market’s formerly frenetic pace had stalled. The sale’s most expensive paintings went for far less than the house had anticipated. Even Goncharova’s undated Still Life with Watermelons (est. £1.5-2 million; $2.3-3 million), which was the top lot of the week, barely reached its lower estimate, fetching £1,553,250 ($2.3 million) from the ubiquitous Kournikova. One of the few works to surpass presale expectations was Abram Archipov’s Young Peasant Woman (est. £100-150,000; $149-224,000), a painting from the second decade of the 20th century that nearly tripled its high estimate to make £433,250 ($664,600).

Much to its detriment, Christie’s seemed to maintain a boom mentality. The house’s experts decided to retain the hefty estimate of £300,000 to £500,000 ($449-749,000) for a series of sketches by Kasimir Malevich, hoping, no doubt, to ride the same wave that had propelled the artist’s Suprematist Composition, 1916, to a record-setting $60,002,500 at Sotheby’s in New York earlier that month. Alas, the tide had turned, and the double-sided drawings were bought in. Konstantin Somov’s provocative Boxer, 1933, showing a nude young athlete from the groin up, was also knocked out of contention by an overpowering estimate — £600,000 to £900,000 ($899,000-1.4 million) — whose low end surpassed the £580,500 ($1.2 million) the painting fetched a mere year ago at Christie’s.

MacDougall’s, which has ranked just behind Sotheby’s in London-based sales of Russian painting since June 2008, had better luck with its Somov lot: 122 ink drawings, 1908-19 (est. £1.5-3 million; $2.3-4.5 million ) done for Le Livre de la marquise, a book of 18th-century erotic French poetry, that went for £1,150,000 million ($1.7 million). Overall, however, the house’s results were as disappointing as those of its counterparts. Its two November sales of 19th- and 20th-century art brought in £2 million less than its single session in the category five months earlier.

"Russian Paintings" originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction''s February 2009 Table of Contents.