Jacob Lehonos

Artist, sculptor, architect

Born 21 March 1891 in Ekaterinoslav province, today's Ukraine; died 19 August 1942 in Shanghai. Had wife Klavdia Ivanovna.

Having studied in the military academy in Taganrog, Lehonos also graduated from the Painting Department of the Imperial Society of the Encouragement for Arts, where he was a favorite student of Nicholas Roerich, held in high regard for his landscape painting and studies of ancient Russian architecture. After fighting in the First World War and then in the Russian Civil War as part of General Kolchak's White Army, Lehonos landed in Shanghai in 1923. 

In 1925, local press took notice of the artist and his "noteworthy" paintings in the art show, where his colleague I. A. Karsnitsky also exhibited her works. In 1926, working as a "mural painting and sculpture specialist" at his studio at 727 Avenue Foch, Lehonos produced a lion relief for the Chinese Naval Military Department and sculpted a pair of cast-iron griffins, mounted on cement pillars in front of the Majestic Hotel. (TCP 12 Sept 1926) He designed stage costumes for cabaret artists Sophie Peken and B. Krupin at the Carlton, and at the end of the year its British manager R. T. Hamilton quit Carlton and joined Lehonos at Lehonos & Hamilton Art Company, with the address at 681 Avenue Joffre (old numbering). 

In 1927, working closely with the architect Robert Fan on the renovation of the Isis Theatre in Hongkew, Lehonos produced "some of the most unusual decorations yet seen in Shanghai," drawing and finishing the mural paintings, designing imitation stained glass windows and creating marble pillars in vivid colors "with a sure artistic touch." (TCP 12 Oct 1927) The stained glass windows depicted Romeo and Juliet, Marguerite and Don Quixote "assiduously tilting at a windmill." The murals, called "the best in any theatre in town," included a variety of classical subjects, depicted "in a manner vivid and restrained." (TCP 16 Oct 1927) "Isis, the patron goddess of this theatre, has been made the central figure of a group depicting music. In another, [the muse of dance] Terpsichore  is seen. Bacchus and his court, in the midst of typical revels, form the subject of a third." Other subjects were Apollo, Orpheus and Euridice. The marble columns, "made to resemble onyx, capped in bronze, lent distinction." (NCDN 13 Oct 1927) . Lehonos' interior of the Isis Theatre fell victim to mob violence in February 1937, when a Soviet picture depicting Italian colonization of Ethiopia in a negative way, provoked anger among Italian army and sailors in Shanghai. Some 200 people stormed the theatre, ruining its interior. The subsequent  Japanese invasion of this neighborhood later that year turned the building into a ruin.

In the year 1927, Lehonos also created the decor for the ballroom of the Moon Palace, the "aristocrat of Hongkew cabarets," (TCP 6 May 1934)  which opened in December.

In 1928, Lehonos worked on the interior of the Hotel Tiny, designed by the fellow Russian architect W. Livin, and was credited for "the artistic touches in the dining room and the den, and the stained glass windows." (TCP 5 July 1928) He also created the murals and the relief over the proscenium in the Grand Theatre, designed by C. H. Gonda in the building of the old Carlton. The artist treated the walls and staircases with "filigree flat-oil stain in old gold" – the first time this technique was used in China. (TCP, Dec 16, 1928).

In 1929, Lehonos produced four 8-foot allegorical sculptures depicting Progress, Commerce, Economy and Industry, in a distinct modernist style. They were placed in the niches on the facade of the newly completed Denis Apartments building on Bubbling Well Road, the project of the American firm Cumine & Co. He also created relief medallions (masherones) for the Sassoon House on the Bund, which opened in August 1929, and painted the murals in the Clements Apartments and Dr. Birt's residence at 227 (11/749) Yu Yuen Road.

As a result of his success as a mural painter and a sculptor, Lehonos was one of the wealthiest Russian artists. He traveled around China, sketching and painting the countryside, city streets and Buddhist sites. His works were regularly exhibited at major Shanghai art shows, where his paintings were called "striking," (TCP 1 May 1938), with the artist possessing "an undoubted flair for dramatic treatment." (TCP 3 July 1931)

Lehonos' only surviving work – the Russian Orthodox Cathedral – is also the largest architectural monument of Shanghai's Russian diaspora. The construction of the Cathedral was initiated in 1927, with the subsequent purchase of the lot in the French Concession, but it was delayed by changes in the lot dimensions, the shortage of funds and the rotation in the church administration. Lehonos submitted his in June 1933, and it replaced the two earlier designs, by L. N. Pashkoff and B. I. Petroff, which had been approved, but not realized. 

Discussing his design, Lehonos explained: "Shanghai cathedral is not a direct reference to any particular old Russian church. It is rather an amalgamation and an expression of the character of ancient religious buildings and ways of construction. One of the prototypes was St. George's Cathedral [part of the St. George Monastery] in Veliky Novgorod. The outline also resembles the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow. I was not thinking about any specific province in Russia, but rather about out whole country – grand, majestic and dear to the Russian heart." (Shanghai Zaria 3 Apr 1934)

The construction stage lasted from August 1933 to spring 1937. In September 1935, Lehonos' mentor Nicholas Roerich visited the site and gave instructions on the interior decoration. During the war, works continued on the interior reconstruction and fight against the mold.

In 1942, Lehonos died of the typhus; he was buried in Lokawei Cemetery. After the war, his son left for the USSR and re-buried father's remains in Tashkent. The whereabouts of some 70 artworks that the son passed to the Soviet Consulate remain unknown; some of the oil paintings are at the Oriental Museum, in Moscow.