Studio: international art (86.1923)

PORTRAITS BY SAVELY SORIN

convinced, by what he has shown me,
that we have in him a real illustrator. 0
Lastly, there is his work as a draughts-
man, working from the model or from
some landscape subject. Very deft and
accomplished are these drawings, too. I
cannot leave this article without this bare
reference to these. They are worthy of
study whenever and wherever met with. 0
George Sheringham.

PORTRAITS BY SAVELY SORIN AT
THE KNOEDLER GALLERIES «

PEOPLE in London know very little
about the work of contemporary
Russian painters ; even the very names of
some of the most prominent among them
are unknown to all save a few who keep
in touch with the progress of art on the
Continent. Bakst, of course, we are all
familiar with by this time, chiefly, it is
true, through the medium of stage repre-
sentation ; but of Ilya Repin, the veteran
leader of the older school of painting in
Russia how many had heard before that
exhibition last year at the Leicester
Galleries revealed a painter of extra-
ordinary power even in his old age i
With Konstantin Somoff, another dis-
tinguished representative of the same
school though of a later generation than
Repin, we have still to make acquaintance
at first hand. In years gone by it was
one of the functions of the International
Society—and a very important one, too—
to bring the work of foreign artists to the
notice of the London public, but of late
this feature has dwindled more and more.
This, no doubt, is in large measure owing
to conditions arising out of the war, but
as one of the results of the great conflict
—or rather, the tragic social upheaval
that has followed it in Russia—has been
the migration to Paris and other western
centres of a large number of Russian
artists, no very serious difficulties, so far
as these are concerned, stand in the way
of fulfilling such a mission, which, by the
way, is one that Whistler, the society's
first President, always had at heart. As
it is, we have to rely largely on the enter-
prise of the directors of private galleries
to become acquainted with the work of
28

foreigners. Thus it has been left to
Messrs. Knoedler & Co. to introduce
to us a very remarkable collection of
portraits by Savely Sorin, one of the
many Russian artists who are now divorced
from the land of their birth, where, indeed,
such art as his finds no favour under the
present regime. In America, where this
collection of portraits was shown before
coming to London, his work aroused
great interest, the more so because of the
immense contrast which it presented with
the turbulent effusions of the so-called
“ advanced ” school, there, as elsewhere,
very much in evidence of late. 0 0

Sorin, who is a native of Polotsk in the
province or Government of Vitebsk, and
is about 40 years old, began his career as an
artist at the Imperial Academy in Petro-
grad under Repin, and although it is
only now that he has come prominently
before the world, his work was even twelve
years ago considered of sufficient merit
to be represented in the great International
Exhibition at Rome (1911), where a capital
portrait of Tamura Karsavina from his
brush was shown. Though nominally a

“head” (mme. rotvand)

BY SAVELY SORIN