Missing work · priority acquisition
Ballad
(The Black Sun)
A missing painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, today known through archival reproduction and related documentation. The current official Čiurlionis database dates the work to 1908 and lists it as missing.
Archival reproduction. Source: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art / ciurlionis.eu.
1875–1911
(The Black Sun)
Priority acquisition
Up to €250,000
Up to €250,000 is available to acquire the original painting if it survives. The offer is subject to expert authentication, documented provenance and clear lawful title.
Because scholarship has suggested that the work may have been lost or destroyed during the upheavals surrounding the Stravinsky family property, documentary evidence is also of major interest even if the painting no longer survives.
No payment is offered for reproductions or copies. Confidential approaches from owners, representatives, institutions and researchers are welcome.
Research notice
Does the original survive?
We are looking for any credible trace of the painting after its documented ownership by Igor Stravinsky: photographs, labels, inventories, correspondence, wartime records, estate papers, storage documentation, institutional references or private-family provenance.
A surviving original would be of exceptional importance. Equally valuable would be evidence that definitively establishes its destruction or later movement.
What is known
The current M. K. Čiurlionis digital catalogue records Ballad (The Black Sun) as a missing work and dates it to 1908. A surviving pencil sketch for the composition is also dated 1908 and remains in the Čiurlionis collection.
The painting entered an unusually important musical provenance. Research by Yumiko Nunokawa, based on correspondence between Igor Stravinsky and Alexandre Benois, established that Stravinsky actively sought a painting by Čiurlionis and personally chose Black Sun. He acquired it in 1912, with Benois and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky involved in the arrangements.
The work appears to have been shown at the Seventh Exhibition of the Union of Russian Artists in St Petersburg, where Stravinsky could have seen it before his move to Paris.
Stravinsky selected and purchased Black Sun. Correspondence shows that he and his wife considered it a particularly characteristic work by Čiurlionis.
Research suggests the painting was first intended for Stravinsky's mother in St Petersburg and was later associated with the Stravinsky estate at Ustyluh, in present-day Ukraine.
The later fate is not securely documented. Scholars have proposed that it may have perished during revolution and civil war, but no conclusive physical trace has been established. The official Čiurlionis database continues to list the painting as missing.
*A number of older publications and reproductions have used a 1909 date. The current official Čiurlionis catalogue uses 1908, which is followed here.
Sources: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art digital catalogue, “Ballad (The Black Sun)” and the surviving sketch; Yumiko Nunokawa, “M. K. Čiurlionis and St. Petersburg: New Facts Concerning His Painting Black Sun,” Art History & Criticism, 13 (2017).
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