International studio (56.1915)

Studio- Talk

is manifest, and the difference is not in favour of
his later productions. It is true, that Somoff’s great
maitrise, his thorough command of form and his
extraordinary taste in the arrangement of any kind
of motive, are displayed as strikingly as heretofore
but the wholly individual keenness of perception
which characterised his earlier work, and those
fascinating combinations of intense colour with
which he used to charm us are now often missing,
and instead we get in certain works, as for instance
the portrait in oils of a Moscow society lady, a
somewhat academic frigidity which only a little
while ago never seemed to be associated with the
name of this artist. Somoff shows himself at his
best in his portrait heads, executed sometimes in
water-colours and sometimes as drawings with the
addition of colour by way of rehaussement. These

we may be able_to say something further by and by
Then, last but not least, a splendid Venus in wood
by the scupltor S. Konenkoff must be mentioned.
The drawing by L. Pasternak, of which a repro-
duction is here given, has been designed to serve’as
an illustration to an essay on Oldridge and Taras
Shevchenko. The national poet of the Ukraine,
who was also a gifted draughtsman and etcher,
became acquainted with the American tragedian
Oldridge in 1858 at the house of Count Fedor
Tolstoi, at that time Vice-President of the Academy
of Arts in St. Petersburg, and the acquaintance
thus initiated developed into a warm friendship, in
spite of the fact that they could understand one
another only through the medium of an interpreter.
Shevchenko at the time drew a portrait of

constitute his particular
domain, and two brilliant
examples of them are here
given by way of illustration.

Apart from this collection
of work by Somoff a life-
sized equestrian portrait of
a Moscow beauty by A.
Golovin formed the clou of
the exhibition, but though
masterly in its draughtsman-
ship this colossal canvas
failed to leave a com-
pletely satisfactory impres-
sion from the purely
pictorial point of view. On
the other hand such works
as Paul Kustodieff’s oriental
motives, the views of Hol-
land and Spain by Mme.
Ostroumova-Lebedeff, and
the designs for theatre
decorations by Mme. N.
Gontcharova proved attrac-
tive both as regards colour
and pictorial composition.
Boris Kustodieff also made
his appearance as a designer
for the theatre at this exhi-
bition, where he showed a
remarkable series of cos-
tume drawings for the
staging of the great Russian
satirist, Saltikoff-Shched-
rin’s, “The Death of
Pasoukhin,” about which


“THE AMERICAN TRAGEDIAN OLDRIDGE AND TARAS SHEVCHENKO, THE POET
OF THE UKRAINE.” FROM A DRAWING BY L. PASTERNAK

59