REMISOFF RENAISSANCE

The eight oil-on-canvas panels and four frescos decorating the rotunda of the Lake Forest Library are all that is left of artist Nicolai Remisoff ’s fascinating legacy in the Chicago area.

Recently restored after water damage from leaks in the now-repaired library dome, Remisoff ’s Poets and Writers of Antiquity paintings are, “as close to their original glory as they’ve ever been,” says Joy Schmoll head of library communications, “thanks to improved conservation techniques and cleaning technologies that are now at the point of molecular precision.”

Taken together, the paintings create a panoramic view of historic classicists in poetry, literature, and philosophy— Homer hanging out with Pindar, Sappho with Theocritus, Cicero with Seneca and so forth. In all, the paintings include depictions of 19 of the world’s great writers and thinkers.

Remisoff completed the work in 1932, the year before his exhibition at the Chicago World’s Fair. By then, Remisoff ’s “Russian Vogue” style of painting was already well known. The 1920s New York saw him designing covers and illustrating articles for Vanity Fair, House & Garden, and Vogue. Here, he would later do the covers for Marshall Field and Co. catalogues.

A Chicagoan from 1929 to 1935, Remisoff—the son of actors in the Russian Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg—returned to the theatrical, designing sets and costumes for more than 20 ballets at the Ruth Page and Adolph Bolm ballet companies. He also created sets for the Chicago Grand Opera, circus scenes for the Woman’s Athletic Club ballroom, and designs for the Punch and Judy and New Palace theaters. This eventually led to Remissoff ’s work in the film industry, where he served as art director or production designer for 31 movies—from Topper Returns (1941) and The Red Pony (1949) to television’s Gunsmoke and finally Ocean’s Eleven.

As the last remaining Remisoff artwork available for public viewing anywhere in the Chicago area, Lake Forest Library’s newly restored Poets and Writers of Antiquity paintings are—to quote from a 1932 article in the Chicago Evening American, “frankly, well worth a run to the swank North Shore village to see.”