51. Alexander Golovin, Portrait of Dmitry Smirnov as Grieux in Jules Massenet’s “Manon”, 1909. Tempera on canvas, 210 × 116 cm, Bakhrushin Theatre Museum, Moscow.
52. Alexander Golovin, Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin as Boris Godunov, 1912. Tempera and gouache on cardboard, 221.5 × 139.5 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
53. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Savva Mamontov, 1897. Oil on canvas, 187 × 142.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
From the 1890s to the Post-Revolutionary Period
Although the World of Art movement attracted many of the best artists, it did not have a monopoly on talent and had little appeal to the older Itinerants, many of whom were still producing interesting and innovative paintings. Surikov, for example, continued to paint until the year before his death, and during the 1880s and 1890s produced a magnificent series of “costume portraits”, often graced with a descriptive title, such as A Siberian Beauty or A Cossack Girl, in addition to the model’s name. In doing so, he aimed to portray “a special beauty, ancient, Russian”. According to Alexander Benois, Surikov was “the first… to discover the peculiar beauty of old Russian colouring”, and these costume portraits are remarkable for their rich, warm tones. But Surikov also painted portraits that were more “modern” in style and more concerned with the personality of the sitter, such as Unknown Girl Against a Yellow Background and Man with an Injured Arm.
Among the “young peredvizhniki” who joined the World of Art group, the most brilliant portraitist was Valentin Serov. Like many of his contemporaries, he delighted in painting out of doors, and some of his most appealing portraits – such as Girl with Peaches, Girl in Sunlight and In Summer – owe their naturalness to their setting or to the interplay of sunlight and shadows. Indeed, Serov regarded them as “studies” rather than portraits, giving them descriptive titles that omitted the sitter’s name. The subject of Girl with Peaches – painted when Serov was only twenty-two – was in fact Mamontov’s daughter Vera. The model for In Summer was Serov’s wife.
When only six years old, Serov began to display signs of artistic talent. Repin acted as his teacher and mentor, giving him lessons in his studio in Paris, at the age of nine, then letting Serov work with him in Moscow, almost like an apprentice. Eventually Repin sent him to study with Pavel Chistiakov – the teacher of many of the World of Art painters, including Nesterov and Vrubel, who was to become a close friend. Because Serov’s career spanned such a long period, his style and subject matter vary considerably – ranging from voluptuous society portraits (the later ones notable for their grand style and sumptuous dresses) to sensitive studies of children, like the one he painted of Mika Morozov in 1901. His portraits of Isaac Levitan and the actress Maria Yermolova demonstrate his genius for capturing his sitter’s personality. Utterly different from any of these is the famous nude study of the dancer Ida Rubinstein, in tempera and charcoal on canvas, which he painted towards the end of his life.
54. Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev, 1904. Oil on canvas, 57 × 83 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
55. Konstantin Korovin, Chorus Girl, 1883. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
56. Vassily Surikov, Unknown Girl against a Yellow Background, 1911. Oil on canvas, 51 × 44 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
57. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Mika Morozov, 1901. Oil on canvas, 62.3 × 70.6 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Although Serov’s early style has much in common with the French Impressionists, he did not become acquainted with their work until after he had painted pictures such as Girl with Peaches. In contrast, Konstantin Korovin was deeply influenced by the French Impressionists almost from the outset of his career, as can be seen from his Chorus Girl, which is regarded as one of the first Impressionist works by a Russian painter.
Together with Korovin, Alexander Golovin designed the crafts section of the Russian Pavilion at the 1900 Paris World Fair. He then went on to design stage sets and costumes for a number of theatres, including the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg (where he became the principal decorator), the Bolshoi, the Moscow Arts Theatre and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Two of his most powerful paintings arose from his interest in the performing arts, namely his Portrait of the theatrical director Vsevolod Meyerhold and the one of the bass singer Fyodor Chaliapin in the role of Boris Godunov, which he painted in 1912.
Chaliapin was the subject of a number of other portraits, including one (when young) by Serov and one by Boris Kustodiev, who depicted him standing like a fur-coated colossus on a snow-covered hillock, while in the background there is a fairgound scene busy with tiny brightly coloured figures. Many of Kustodiev’s portraits and genre paintings are richly decorative – for example, his splendid Merchant’s Wife Drinking Tea – while the elegance and accuracy of his portrayal of the human figure reflect his early training as a sculptor.
58. Valentin Serov, Girl with Peaches (Portrait of Vera Mamontova), 1887. Oil on canvas, 91 × 85 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
59. Konstantin Somov, Lady in Blue (Portrait of Elizaveta Martynova), 1897–1900. Oil on canvas, 103 × 103 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
60. Konstantin Somov, L’Echo du temps passé (Echo of the Past), 1903. Watercolor, gouache and graphite on paper mounted on cardboard, 61 × 64 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
61. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Ida Rubinstein, 1910. Tempera and charcoal on paper, 147 × 233 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
62. Leon Bakst, The Supper, 1902. Oil on canvas, 150 × 100 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
63. Leon Bakst, Portrait of Zinaida Hippius, 1906. Pencil and red and white chalk on paper mounted on cardboard, 54 × 44 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
64. Valentin Serov, Portrait of the Princess Olga Orlova, 1911. Oil on canvas, 327.5 × 160 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
65. Mikhaïl Vrubel, Young Girl against a Persian Carpet, 1886. Oil on canvas, 104 × 68 cm, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.
66. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, 1922. Oil on canvas, 54.5 × 43.5 cm.
This accuracy was also evident in Lady in Blue, on which Konstantin Somov worked from 1897 to 1900. He achieves its effects by an unexpected synthesis of realism and stylization. The delicate beauty of the model – the artist Elizaveta Martynova, who died soon after this portrait was painted – appears all the more lifelike because of the artificial pose and scenery, and the old-fashioned dress that Somov asked her to wear. In contrast, the sketch of the poet Zinaida Hippius by Leon Bakst – who produced spectacular costume designs – is uncontrived and naturalistic. Philip Maliavin painted portraits of several of the World of Art painters, such as Somov and Grabar, that convey their character and characteristics with great insight and sensitivity.
From the first decade of the twentieth century onwards, “expressive” use of colour became more prevalent in Russian portraiture and figure painting – as, for example, in Ilya Mashkov’s