Tretyakov Gallery. Part №7: Master of portrait and landscape – Konstantin Somov

Part №6:

Text on Serbian:

Државна галерија Третјаков. Наставак №7: Велемаjстор портретa и пеjзажa – Константин Сомов

Text on Russian:

Третьяковская галерея. Часть №7: Мастер портрета и пейзажа – Константин Сомов

Konstantin Andreyevich Somov (Russian: Константин Андреевич Сомов; 1869 –1939) was a Russian artist associated with the Mir iskusstva.

*B. Kustodiev*: “Portrait of the artist K.A Somov”, 1914.

Born into a family of a major art historian and Hermitage Museum curator Andrey Ivanovich Somov, he became interested in 18th-century art and music at an early age.

***“Members of the World of Art Movement”***, by Boris Kustodiev (1916-1920). From left to right: Igor Grabar, Nicholas Roerich, Eugene Lanceray, Kustodiev, Ivan Bilibin, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Alexandre Benois, Heorhiy Narbut, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Nikolay Milioti, Konstantin Somov and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky.

Inspired by Watteau and Fragonard, he preferred to work with watercolours and gouache. For three years he worked upon his masterpiece, Lady in Blue, painted in the manner of 18th-century portraitists.

During the 1910-s, Somov executed a number of rococo harlequin scenes and illustrations to the poems by Alexander Blok. Many of his works were exhibited abroad, especially in Germany, where the first monograph on him was published in 1909.

***

USSR stamp dedicated to Blok (1980), based on the portrait made by Somov. *Alexander Alexandrovich Blok* (1880 – 1921) – Russian poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator, literary critic. A classic of Russian literature of the 20th century, one of the most important representatives of the *Russian symbolism*.

***

Following the Russian Revolution, he emigrated to the United States, but found the country “absolutely alien to his art” and moved to Paris. He was buried at the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Cemetery.

Somov’s painting “Russian Pastoral” (1922) at the Christie’s auction was sold on November 29, 2006 for a record amount of 2 million 400 thousand pounds. Prior to this, not a single painting by a Russian artist was rated so highly.

**“Russian Pastoral”** (1922): *2 million 400 thousand pounds*.

This record for the value of Russian painting was broken in London at the Christie’s auction in June 2007 – Somov’s painting “The Rainbow” was sold for 3.716 million pounds (more than $ 7.327 million) at a starting price of 400 thousand pounds (about 800 thousand dollars).