Konstantin Somov was one of Russia's greatest painters, equally at home with
portraits, illustrations and landscapes. His landscape, The
Rainbow (1927) set the record for the price at auction for a
piece of Russian art when it was sold in 2007 for $7.33 million.
He
was a founder member of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) movement along
with the likes of Leon Bakst. Set up in
1898, the following year they published a magazine with the same name.
Somov was the son of the curator of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and
studied at the Academy of Arts there from 1888 until 1897. From 1897
until 1899 he lived in Paris.
Somov
was fascinated, not just be eighteenth century painting, but also the music of
the time so it is no surprise to see him producing illustrations set in the
period.
The
influence of Watteau and Fragonard is evident in these illustrations,
especially in this amusing picture of a lady using a chamber pot.
These
illustrations are from a book of erotic short stories published in St
Petersburg in 1918, Le Livre de la Marquise, at a time
when the Russian Revolution had resulted in a temporary end to censorship in
the country.
Somov
had been working on these illustrations since the turn of the century.
Interestingly, a later edition contained more explicit pictures including
different versions of some of the originals, as can be seen above.
In
the nineteen twenties Somov moved, briefly, to the United States but was not
happy there and returned to Paris where he lived for the rest of his life.
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