DOI Heft:
No. 248 (November 1913)
DOI Artikel:Pica, Vittorio: Three russian painters: Konstantin Somoff, Igor Grabar, and Philip Maliavine
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21208#0135
Three Russian Painters
“UNE VIEILLE” BY PHILIP MALIAVINE
to seek refuge in bygone times. The epoch he
most often chooses is the latter part of the
eighteenth century, and the society he loves to
depict as being most suited to his temperament
is that of the Court of Louis XV or Louis XVI.
The languishing grace, the mellifluous elegance,
the licentious extravagance of the gallants of the
period, and the piquant wit which the menacing
influence of the bloody catastrophe of the Revolu-
tion veils with sadness for us who can look
back across the centuries, the dames also in their
high poudre coiffures and flowery hooped gowns,
with their satellites in laced coats and swords
and tricornes, stimulated the imagination of the
young Russian artist, and he takes profound
pleasure, and is able furthermore to infect the
sympathetic beholder with the same enthusiasm,
in depicting them in their rich and gay costumes,
against the picturesque background of the
formal gardens of the period.
Somoff has, however, sometimes con-
descended to depict types and costumes of
a less remote age, though always sufficiently
far removed from, those of the present day.
The romantic exaltation, the melancholy
passion, and the sentimental vapourings,
not to mention the elegant clothes, of the
contemporaries of Werther, of Rene, and
of Jacopo Ortis, with their ostentatious in-
tolerance of the banalities of everyday life
and the common-sense ways of practical
men—these, too, have atttracted the
painter’s attention and laid siege to his
sympathies. In a series of very tasteful
compositions painted in oil, tempera, or
pastel he has presented to us the poets
and the diminutive dames with their sad
and fatalist lovers of the early part of the
last century, drawing them usually in pairs
in languishing attitudes in the shadow of
overhanging trees yellow with autumn, or
reclining on the bank of some lake whose
limpid waters reflect the cloudy sky.
The sympathy of the public was at first
alienated from these works of Somoff be-
cause of a certain wilful simplification
drawing and rather daring chromatic effects
which aroused the ire of the critics. Then
also he showed a tendency to forsake—in
his female figures especially—the tra-
ditional characteristics of plastic beauty
in favour of that beauty of expression which
is apparent rather in imperfect contour and
irregularities of feature.
The works of which I have spoken are in-
dubitably those in which the personality of Somoff
has manifested itself in its most original and most
interesting manner, but we must not forget that his
art is not limited to these subjects. His various
landscapes, treated with largeness and sobriety,
reveal him as a robust painter of nature, while
numerous portraits of men, women, and children,
varied in technique, in composition and size, testify
to his abilities in searching out and depicting the
physical aspect and psychic character of a human
creature. A large number of black-and-white
drawings and sketches in colour afford additional
proof of his elegance as a delicate and refined
designer of book decorations. Nor must I omit to
mention some delightful porcelain figures designed
and coloured after the fashion of the exquisite
pieces of the eighteenth century, and executed
”3
“UNE VIEILLE” BY PHILIP MALIAVINE
to seek refuge in bygone times. The epoch he
most often chooses is the latter part of the
eighteenth century, and the society he loves to
depict as being most suited to his temperament
is that of the Court of Louis XV or Louis XVI.
The languishing grace, the mellifluous elegance,
the licentious extravagance of the gallants of the
period, and the piquant wit which the menacing
influence of the bloody catastrophe of the Revolu-
tion veils with sadness for us who can look
back across the centuries, the dames also in their
high poudre coiffures and flowery hooped gowns,
with their satellites in laced coats and swords
and tricornes, stimulated the imagination of the
young Russian artist, and he takes profound
pleasure, and is able furthermore to infect the
sympathetic beholder with the same enthusiasm,
in depicting them in their rich and gay costumes,
against the picturesque background of the
formal gardens of the period.
Somoff has, however, sometimes con-
descended to depict types and costumes of
a less remote age, though always sufficiently
far removed from, those of the present day.
The romantic exaltation, the melancholy
passion, and the sentimental vapourings,
not to mention the elegant clothes, of the
contemporaries of Werther, of Rene, and
of Jacopo Ortis, with their ostentatious in-
tolerance of the banalities of everyday life
and the common-sense ways of practical
men—these, too, have atttracted the
painter’s attention and laid siege to his
sympathies. In a series of very tasteful
compositions painted in oil, tempera, or
pastel he has presented to us the poets
and the diminutive dames with their sad
and fatalist lovers of the early part of the
last century, drawing them usually in pairs
in languishing attitudes in the shadow of
overhanging trees yellow with autumn, or
reclining on the bank of some lake whose
limpid waters reflect the cloudy sky.
The sympathy of the public was at first
alienated from these works of Somoff be-
cause of a certain wilful simplification
drawing and rather daring chromatic effects
which aroused the ire of the critics. Then
also he showed a tendency to forsake—in
his female figures especially—the tra-
ditional characteristics of plastic beauty
in favour of that beauty of expression which
is apparent rather in imperfect contour and
irregularities of feature.
The works of which I have spoken are in-
dubitably those in which the personality of Somoff
has manifested itself in its most original and most
interesting manner, but we must not forget that his
art is not limited to these subjects. His various
landscapes, treated with largeness and sobriety,
reveal him as a robust painter of nature, while
numerous portraits of men, women, and children,
varied in technique, in composition and size, testify
to his abilities in searching out and depicting the
physical aspect and psychic character of a human
creature. A large number of black-and-white
drawings and sketches in colour afford additional
proof of his elegance as a delicate and refined
designer of book decorations. Nor must I omit to
mention some delightful porcelain figures designed
and coloured after the fashion of the exquisite
pieces of the eighteenth century, and executed
”3