Konstantin Somov

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Andreyevich and the family name is Somov.

Konstantin Somov
Константин Сомов
Self-portrait (1921)
Born	Konstantin Andreyevich Somov (1869-11-30)November 30, 1869 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	May 6, 1939(1939-05-06) (aged 69) Paris, France
Education	Member Academy of Arts (1913)
Alma mater	Imperial Academy of Arts
Known for	Painting
Style	Modernism

Konstantin Andreyevich Somov (Russian: Константин Андреевич Сомов; November 30, 1869 – May 6, 1939) was a Russian artist associated with the Mir iskusstva.

Biography

Early life

Konstantin Somov. A portrait taken at the "Miracle" photo studio in St. Petersburg. 1910s

Konstantin Somov painting portrait of Boris Snezhkovsky with Boris standing behind in 1930

Konstantin Somov was born on November 30, 1869 in St. Petersburg. He was the second son of art historian and curator of the Hermitage Museum Andrei Somov. His mother, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, came from the noble family of the Lobanovs. She was well-educated and a musician. She instilled in her children a love of theater, music, and painting. The Somovs had a large private collection of old prints, paintings and drawings. Young Konstantin dreamed of becoming an artist from a very young age.

For the first time Alexandre Benois met with Somov in the private gymnasium of Karl May. Dmitry Filosofov also studied there, and Somov found a common language and even became friends with him. Benois in his memoirs says that their manner of sticking together, but apart from everyone else, for some reason attracted Benois himself. Later, Dmitry Filosofov was sent to Italy due to illness, and Somov, who had a hard time studying science, was taken from the gymnasium by his father. At the age of 20, Konstantin Somov entered the Imperial Academy of Arts. He studied there under Ilya Repin from 1888 to 1897. While at the academy, Benois introduced him to Sergei Diaghilev and Léon Bakst. The three founded the World of Art to which Somov liberally contributed.

Studying in the academy was not easy for Somov, but in 1897 he successfully completed it and moved to Paris to continue his education at the legendary Académie Colarossi.

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.

The artist's first major success came a year before graduation from the Academy. Somov and Benois spent the summer of 1896 at their dacha near Oranienbaum, in the village of Martyshkino. The landscapes and sketches he created there were highly praised by critics and colleagues. That year he also created illustrations for the works of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann.

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

After the revolution

Somov, like many of his contemporaries, greeted the revolution in Russia with enthusiasm. But as living conditions gradually deteriorated, his opinion soured. His apartment was nationalized, and he was later evicted. He struggled to retain the rights to his art.

In December 1923, Konstantin Somov, together with the Russian Exhibition, went to the United States as an authorized representative of Petrograd. In the USA, he became close to the family of Sergei Rachmaninoff and painted portraits of the composer and his daughter. He never returned to his homeland, choosing instead to settle in Paris, France, declaring Soviet Russia "absolutely alien to his art". In Paris, a community of Russian émigré artists grew, and Somov found inspiration in the "world of artists" with old friends Benois, Bakst and Serebryakova.

Private life

Somov was a member of the World of Art a prominent and influential Russian magazine which inspired a major art movement. He served on the editorial board and contributed illustrations and designs.

Somov was already a well-known artist by the time he ended his studies, and led a reclusive lifestyle. As evidenced by his letters from that period, loneliness was a burden for him. In the winter of 1899, Somov wrote to his friend and colleague Liza Zvantseva: “Unfortunately, I still have no romance with anyone - flirting is, perhaps, very light. But I'm tired of being without romance - it's time, otherwise life goes away and youth, and it becomes scary. I am terribly sorry that my character is heavy, boring, gloomy. I would like to be cheerful, light, so that everything is knee-deep, amorous and rip-off. Only such people have fun, interesting and not scared to live!".

In 1910 when Somov was forty years old, he met eighteen-year-old Methodiy Lukyanov whom Somov nicknamed "Myth". He became Somov's closest companion. Methodiy settled with the Somovs and he became part of the family. Methodiy helped Somov run his household and organize exhibitions. He was also Somov's advisor and critic. In 1918, Somov painted a large portrait of Lukyanov sitting on the sofa in pajamas and a dressing gown. This portrait can be seen in the Russian Museum.

Myth fell ill in the spring of 1931 with tuberculosis, which greatly distressed Somov. In letters to his sister in Russia, Somov wrote: “Every minute of my life is now torment - although I do everything I need to - eat, talk with visitors, even work a little - the thought of Methodius and the upcoming separation does not leave me. Now I absorb into myself his face, his every word, knowing that soon I will not see him again "..." Yesterday, lying on a mattress, on the floor by his bed, I tried to pray mentally - it's me! God, if you exist and care about people, prove, save Methodius to me, and I will believe in you! But it's all in vain."

Somov remained with Methodiy in Paris until Myth's death. Methodiy's last words to Somov were: "Kostya ... goodbye."

Around 1930, Somov met Boris Mikhailovich Snejkovsky (born 23 July 1910): "...the twenty-year old young man who would inspire several of Somov's best later works. He would sit for straightforward portrait drawings, beautiful, mildly suggestive oil paintings, and he may have been the model for more erotic watercolors. The exact nature of his relationship with his model and friend is unknown."

Somov was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, south of Paris.

Legacy

On June 14, 2007, Somov's landscape "The Rainbow" (1927) was sold at Christie's for US$7.33 million, a record for a work at an auction of Russian art.

Somov's diary (Dnevik) for the years 1917–1927 was published in Russian by art historian Pavel S. Golubev (Dmitrii Sechin publishing house, Moscow) in 2017, 2018 and 2019; the three volumes total over 2100 pages.

Works

• 
  A. K. Benois (1896)
• 
  Vyacheslav Ivanov's Cor Ardens (1907)
• 
  A Ridiculed Kiss (1908)
• 
  Mikhail Kuzmin (1909)
• 
  Alexander Blok's Theatre (1909)
• 
  La Petite Langue de Colombine (1915)
• 
  Illustration for The Book of the Marquise ("Книга маркизы") (1918)
• 
  Sergei Rachmaninoff (1925)
• 
  Open door onto a garden
• 
  Portrait of a Woman
• 
  A Reclining Man
• 
  The Boxer (1933)
• 
  Portrait of Boris Snezhkovsky (1936)

See also

• List of Russian artists