Naps Yevgen (1848-1886) – sculptor, painter. He was born into a poor family of Baltic Germans.
He did not receive a systematic art education, but since childhood he was fond of drawing. In the memoirs of Ya.I. Butovich, he predicted that Naps was either a self-taught amateur or an early-deceased student of the Academy of Arts. In his youth he moved to St. Petersburg, where in a small workshop he began to restore porcelain, small sculptures and bronze sculptures for antique dealers and collectors. Later he made custom copies of famous works by Russian sculptors.
An accurate version of Naps’s biography is difficult to establish today. His name can be found in the notes of historian and art critic OM Benoit, but he has Naps already noted as a restorer of paintings. Mentions of the artist can be found in the address books “All of St. Petersburg” for the 1890-1900s, indicating his place of residence on the Fountain.
Analyzing the work of Naps, we can conclude that at an early stage he repeatedly used the plots of Lansere (“Falcon”, “Skobelev”, “Three in Winter”), but later became known for his original works. There is also a version that Lansere himself worked under the pseudonym “Naps”.
He performed reductions (reduced copies) and variations of works by Russian sculptors for the capital’s bronze foundries. In 1878, in Smirnov’s foundry, a bust of OV Suvorov authored by VI Demut-Malinowski (1814).
Naps’s famous works testify to his professional mastery of the art of bronze casting. Naps’s work was cast at the bronze factory of Werfel, a competitor to the workshop of F. Chopin, who also concluded a long-term bondage contract with Lansere (as it turned out later – for almost the life of the sculptor).
