Painting. Russian artists. Konstantin Somov (1869-1939)
 Konstantin Somov, a painter and graphic artist, was the
son of a curator at the Hermitage. He attended St.
Petersburg Academy of Art from 1888 to 1897, studying
under II'ya Repin from 1894. In 1897 and in 1898-9 Somov
went to Paris to attend the studios of Filippo Colarossi
and Whistler. Neither the Realism of the Russian
teachers nor the fleeting quality of Whistler's art was
reflected for long in Somov's work. He turned instead
for inspiration to the Old Masters in the Hermitage and
to works of his contemporary English and German artists,
which he knew from visits abroad and from art journals.
Somov was associated with the World of Art Journal from
1898, and like some other members of the group, he
concentrated on the subjects from the eighteenth
century. In the Lady in Blue, of 1897-1900, an oil
portrait of the artist Yelizaveta Martynova, the
outmoded dress of the figure in the foreground, the
park-like setting create the atmosphere of a reverie.
More than any other member of the group, Somov was
influenced by Ambrey Beardsley. This is evident in
etchings such as The Kiss, of 1903, and in paintings of
sleeping women in sensuous poses. Somov entered the
Russian trading as one of the most popular and
influential artists of Mir Iskusstva. His painting is
characterised by a melancholy nostalgia in line with the
gallant age of Watteau. However, a light erotic intimacy
of the rococo aroused in Somov an abrupt nervous sense
of the grotesque; characters are engulfed in the
atmosphere of the doom of an ancient culture. Sharing
many of the moods of his work including motifs of a
splendid transience - with the symbolism. Somov made a
number of remarkable portraits of renowned Russian
writers and artists, including one of Alexander Blok, of
1907, (pencil on gouache), which is considered one of
the best portraits of the great Russian poet.
Somov left Russia in 1923 and in 1925 settled in Paris
where he painted variants of his early works and died in
1939.
Literature: Book "Russian art" A.P. Minyar-Belorucheva |
