Konstantin Somov (1869-1939) was a Russian artist, especially famous as the author of the obscene collection of engravings “The Book of the Marquise” and frivolous illustrations inspired by the rococo style and the gallant age. Except that he himself did not consider these artworks serious - “an empty, commercial thing, only for sale”. And it is a bit pathetic that even now Somov is perceived as an artist of frivolous scenes, although he had in his asset wonderful graphic artwork, subtle psychological portraits and beautiful landscapes, inferior in quality to the best masters of the genre. We will talk about the life and work of Konstantin Somov in this article.
A holiday in the neighborhood of Venice
Konstantin was predestined to be an artist, or at least to connect his life with art since childhood. His father held a prominent position in the Hermitage, and therefore the house received many artists and art critics, had extensive conversations about art, and in the Hermitage little Kostya ran very often. So it is not surprising that, in addition to Konstantin, his sister Anna became an artist, and his older brother Alexander worked as an art historian.
Family happiness
Konstantin studied at the Karl May School in St. Petersburg, a very prestigious and advanced school, where he became friends with the future famous critic Alexander Benois and journalist and Dmitry Filosofov.
Landscape with rainbow.
They thought about a new art, where there would be no emasculated and hardened traditions of academism. At first there was a circle “Nevsky Pickwickians”, and later, when Sergei Diaghilev and Leon Bakst joined it, on the basis of this circle and was organized the creative association “World of Art”, which played a key role in the formation of Russian Art Nouveau. It included Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov, Mikhail Nesterov, Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Vrubel and others. But it was Somov who was one of the “founding fathers” of the World of Art.
Italian comedy. A variant of a painting made for the World of Art auction in favor of the wounded
In 1888, Konstantin Somov became a student of the Academy of Arts, and he had a significant advantage over many other young visiting artists, such as Vasily Perov, Viktor Vasnetsov, Isaac Levitan and others who were not so lucky with their parents. Young Kostya Somov saw Paris for the first time at the age of nine, and he did not need to try to get a boarding trip to Europe, because he could familiarize himself with all the masterpieces of painting for parental money.
Figures in the park
And in 1897, after 11 years of studying painting in St. Petersburg, Somov moved to Paris. There is the capital of painting, there settled old friends - Diaghilev and Benois, there you can admire the paintings of impressionists and think about new ways in art. True, not all the paintings of famous artists, seen by Somov in Paris, he liked. “Gauguin is very good, but in Matisse's ointment I do not see any art at all, Cézanne wrote some excellent still lifes, but his nude bathing is despicable, and Van Gogh's work is not only not brilliant, but in general the embodiment of bad taste”.
Illustration for Long's novel “Daphnis and Chloe.”
Somov found himself in graphics. He drew covers for the magazine “World of Art”, illustrated works by Pushkin, Gogol, Balmont and many other writers. And soon came and popularity, though it was connected with a collection of frivolous prints “The Book of the Marquise”, which at first was not even published in Russia, and only in 1918, after all the revolutionary upheavals, issued a small edition at an underground printing house.
The Book of the Marquise
After the revolution, Somov lay low, tried not to show himself in any way and at the first opportunity to go abroad. However, it turned out only in 1923, when he went to the United States as an authorized exhibition of Russian art. He never returned. In 1928 he bought an apartment in Paris and thoroughly engaged in artwork, wrote many portraits and landscapes, created a series of amazing watercolors, sincerely longing for his forever lost homeland.
Privateers
In 1910, Somov befriended an 18-year-old model painter named Methodius Lukyanov. Their relationship soon crossed the boundaries of friendship and continued until Lukyanov's death from tuberculosis in 1932, which was then practically a verdict. Even Lukyanov's emigration from Russia and quiet life in Granville, where he had purchased a farm for himself, could only slow the course of the disease.
Portrait. M. G. Lukyanova.
And Somov continued to live in Paris, wrote paintings and died quietly in the arms of his friend Braikevich in 1939.
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