Boris Riab (Russian-French, 1898-1975), Three Portraits of Sporting Dogs

Each a watercolor on paper, each signed, and all three presented under glass within similar matting and frames. Depictions include an English Setter, an English Spaniel and a German Wirehaired Pointer.

Frame dimensions 17 3/4 x 24 in. (each approximately)

Private Collection, Edenton, North Carolina

Boris Riab, born Boris Riabouchinsky in Moscow, was a Russian-born artist renowned for his depictions of sporting dogs and gamebirds. Trained at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts and a cavalry officer in World War I, he fled the Russian Revolution and eventually settled in Paris in 1927. There, he adopted the name “Riab” and gained a following among elite hunting circles for his detailed watercolors and lithographs of hunting scenes.

Riab’s work, focused on pointers, retrievers, ducks, and pheasants, appeared in major French sporting publications and was widely published by Parisian lithography firms. He exhibited at the Salon des Animaliers and remained active into the 1950s, producing commissions and prints now highly prized by collectors.

All three with toning; the spaniel and pointer with significant foxing. Not examined out of the frames.