Title of the article:

RUSSIAN EMIGRES PORTRAYED BY CONSTANTIN SOMOV

Author(s):

Pavel S. Golubev 

Information about the author/authors

Pavel S. Golubev — PhD Student, Federal State Budget Educational Institution of Higher Education M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of History, Department of Russian Art., 27 — Lomonosovsky Av., 4, 119192 Moscow, Russia. E-mail: pavel@golubev.ru

Section

History of Arts

Year

2017

Volume

Vol. 47

Pages

Pp. 250-260

Received

November 03, 2017

Date of publication

March 15, 2018

Index UDK

7.03

Index BBK

85.143(2Рос=Рус)

Abstract

This article covers the life paths of Russian emigres, depicted by the artist, one of the founders of the art union “World of Art”, Constantin Somov (1869–1939). Somov left the USSR in 1923, worked a lot in the United States and France. There he painted dozens of portraits, however with minor exceptions nothing is known about his sitters, White Russians. Although in the 1960–1970s a number of Somov’s portraits came in Soviet museums, the researchers did not pay great attention to them, partly for ideological reasons, or because of a lack of information on the portrayed ones. The situation changed little during post-Soviet times. The paper attempts to fill this gap. It identifies biographies of some Somov`s models — white Russians from his circle as well as the circumstances of their acquaintance with the artist. Somov’s portraits are interpreted as a phenomenon of the last one and a half decades of the artist’s life. The author has involved unpublished materials — diaries and correspondence of Somov, kept in the manuscript department of the State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg and draws upon materials for biographies of Russian emigres, portrayed by Constantin Somov, from Russian and American archives. The paper determined the name of the artist`s model - previously unknown — that posed to him for several portrait etudes.

Keywords

C. Somov; “World of Art”; Russian Art of the XIX–XX centuries; Russian portrait; Russian emigres; White emigre.

References

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