Boris Anisfeld was an impressionist painter whose name remained in obscurity for many years in Russia. That the artist was discovered so late is for the most part because he spent most of his life and created most of his work in America. The turbulent artistic life at the turn of the twentieth century helped Anisfeld to quickly establish himself as a painter, graphic artist as well as a set-designer for many theatrical productions. His paintings explore various themes, including mythological and biblical stories, sometimes coming close to the work of the symbolists. He experiments with portraits, landscape and still-life. The artist became renowned for his pictorial figures from fantastical dreams and féeries; his style of painting was expressive and endeavoured to achieve an emotional intensity through his palette of colours and a distinct and irreal transfer of colour. It was, however, the theatre which became his most organic form of self-expression. Anisfeld was known as the 'alchemist of colour' because of the breadth and magic of the colours he used in his sets.