Eugene Lanceray (1875–1946) was a Soviet painter and graphic artist, a top figure in Russian Art Nouveau, a tutor, a magazine and book illustrator; he also worked as a stage designer, landscape painter, and monumental decorator. Lanceray was an Academician and Full Member of the Imperial Academy of Arts, an Honored Artist of the Georgian SSR (1933), a People's Artist of the RSFSR (1945) and a Winner of the Stalin Prize, Second Grade (1943).
Eugene Lanceray was born on August 23 (September 4), 1875, in Pavlovsk of the St. Petersburg Province. He was a member of the World of Art Society, the Union of Russian Artists, the St. Petersburg Society of Architects, and the Association of Revolutionary Russian Artists. He was a graduate of the First St. Petersburg Gymnasium. From 1892, he studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts.
In later time, Lanceray collaborated with the Shipovnik publishing house established by Z. Grzhebin and S. Kopelman, including the design of its logo. In 1907–1908, he became one of the founders of the Old Theater. E. Lanceray continued his cooperation with the Theater in 1913–1914. In 1911–1915, he was the Head of the Art Department at the Imperial Porcelain Factory and glass engraving workshops in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.
In 1914–1915, he was a military artist correspondent on the Caucasian front during World War I. From 1920, he worked as an illustrator at the Museum of Ethnography and took part in ethnographic expeditions with the Caucasian Archaeological Institute.
From 1922, he was a professor at the Georgian Academy of Arts. In 1927, he was sent on a six-month assignment to Paris. In 1929, he joined the Society of Painters. He co-authored (in cooperation with I. Sharleman) the coat of arms of the Georgian SSR, which was approved in 1921. From 1934 to 1938, he taught at the All-Russian Academy of Arts in Leningrad.
E. Lanceray organically combined features of Art Nouveau and Symbolism in his work. The master was known for his diverse techniques, compositional ingenuity, and the impeccable sense of the sheet plane. The artist created a new type of historical painting, where small canvases authentically conveyed the spirit of a particular historical era.
The postage stamp provides a fragment of paining Ships of the Time of Peter I (1909, State Russian Museum); the margins of the souvenir sheet feature a portrait of the painter against the background of his art studio.
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