Boris Anrep

Boris Vasilyevich Anrep (Russian: Борис Васильевич Анреп) (27 September 1883 – 7 June 1969) was a Russian artist, active in Britain, who devoted himself to the art of mosaic.

In Britain, he is known for his monumental mosaics at the National Gallery, London, Westminster Cathedral and the Bank of England. Being close to the Bloomsbury Group, he was a noticeable figure in London social and intellectual life from 1912 up to the mid-1960s.

In Ireland, he is known for his mosaics at Christ the King Cathedral, Mullingar.

In Russia, he is associated with the Silver Age of Russian Poetry as the addressee of many beautiful poems by Anna Akhmatova, including her Tale of the Black Ring. Anrep was also friendly with Nikolay Gumilyov, an outstanding poet and Akhmatova's husband, and Nikolay Nedobrovo, a talented critic, two prominent figures of the 1910s in Saint Petersburg.

The Anrep family, originally from Westphalia, belongs to Swedish and Russian nobility and numbered a few renowned army officers in 16th–19th centuries.

Anrep was born in 1883 in Saint Petersburg. His father, Vassily von Anrep, professor of forensic medicine, occupied high positions in the ministries of education and of interior and was elected in 1907 to the Russian parliament, the Duma. From 1899 to 1901 Boris went to school in Kharkov, where he first met Nikolay Nedobrovo, and spent the summer of 1899 in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, learning English. From 1902 Anrep studied in Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg and graduated in 1905. The same year he met Yunia Khitrovo, whom he married three years later.

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