Studio: international art (64.1915)

Studio- Ta Ik

As a result the impression communicated was that
of a strong artistic personality endowed in a high
degree with individual traits.

Anna Golubkina, who was born in 1864, comes
from a peasant family. In 1891 she entered the
Moscow School of Art and then for a term attended
the Imperial Academy of Arts in Petrograd, after
which she studied for a while in various Paris
studios. Here her work aroused the interest of
Rodin, and although the young Russian sculptress
never really worked under the immediate super-
vision of the great French master, he exercised a
strong influence on her development, which is seen
chiefly in numerous productions of her first period,
particularly those of a figural nature, and it is also
plainly visible in her work of a later date. But
Miss Golubkina has never become an imitator of
Rodin ; she was not long in finding that path of
her own which she has pursued down to the present
time with striking success.

The strength of Miss Golubkina’s talent lies in
that domain of art in which the chief women
artists past and present have gained distinction—
namely portraiture. The treatment of the human
body, the plastic rendering of its phases of
movement and the play of its muscles—all this
has comparatively little interest for this artist, and

only rarely has she suc-
cessfully essayed figure
compositions of large
dimensions and designs
of a symbolic, abstract
character. She has by
preference devoted her-
self to the portrait bust,
and here too it is not so
much the bust proper that
has engaged her attention
as the countenance and
its characteristic linea-
ments. Side by side with
this specifically feminine
trait there goes an alto-
gether masculine vigour
of conception ; a strength
of facture which is often
distinctly unfeminine, and
it is this trait that gives
to Miss Golubkina’s busts
and heads a quite indi-
vidual cachet. Two types
of countenance constantly
recur with variations in Miss Golubkina’s <xuvre.
On the one hand we have a delicate, frail type of
woman and child with heavy eyelids and mouths
that wear an expression of suffering ; and then as a
contrast to this type we have a sensual, satyric cast
of countenance with thick lips, projecting cheek
bones and chin, representing the Dionysiac ele-
ment in man. The two types are seen together in
the pair of heads here reproduced.

Miss Golubkina’s productivity is not, however,
restricted to creations of this kind. In addition
to a number of other compositions of diverse
sorts, she has executed numerous portrait busts of
prominent Russian personages, which, besides
being of undoubted artistic value, are also worthy
of notice as iconographic documents. She has
been particularly successful with works of this
nature since wood has become her favourite medium.
The somewhat hyper-sensitive lyricism of her
marble heads has found a desirable counterpoise
in this sturdy material, which also affords scope for
a great diversity of colour treatment, and her whole
factu7-e has assumed a more virile appearance.
Her collective exhibition contained some striking
examples of her work in wood, in the shape of some
portrait busts of elderly ladies, notably a head
of truly Rembrandtesque fervour from the collec-
tion of Mr. A. Brocard; and her busts of two

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