Konstantin Andreevich Somov, 1869-1939

The sheets appears sound and the colours are fresh. The painting is clean and ready to hang. Held in a gold painted wooden frame and under glass. Unexamined out of frame.
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Among the core artists of the World of Art group, Konstantin Somov was unique in having practically never worked for the stage. His work is so calculatedly decorative, so suffused by themes of the masquerade and make-believe, that this may seem to be a lacuna in his oeuvre. Yet looking closely, one realises that the artist was so aware of the theatricality of life, that he did nothing but paint the theatre. "What a frightening mirror he puts before the laughing fete!" observed Somov's contemporary, the poet Mikhail Kuzmin, "masquerade and theatre as a symbol of falsity, the puppet-like in human feelings and movements, frequently attract the artist. The irony, and almost tender caricature in his love scenes is evident." Indeed, landscapes and interiors are only the sets for the figures Somov dresses in varying costumes, but whose faces reappear, like a troupe of actors, in his works. They play out a repertoire of scenes in his works that remains essentially constant throughout his career.

Perhaps the most recurrent subject, and certainly the most popular with the public even in the artist's lifetime, was the masquerade or carnival. In such works, characters of the Italian commedia dell'arte theatre flit among other revelers, who are usually dressed in costumes of the 18^th century, Somov's favourite historical era. The present work is therefore striking because the artist introduces more modern costumes. It is useful to contrast it with another drawing, nearly identical in its compositional structure, created the following year and sold in these rooms in The Russian Sale, November 2005, lot 80. The latter, which was reproduced on the cover of the German magazine Die Dame, maintains period costumes and a somewhat ethereal pastel color scheme. In the present piece, however, men in coat-tails and women in gowns with exposed arms and legs are drawn in vibrant colors and intense blacks that give it a very physical presence. There is also a couple, at the very centre, dancing in a close, face-to-face position typical of the dance styles that were becoming popular in the twenties—in the other work, the couple is depicted side by side. It was not unusual for Somov to simply repeat a successful composition with a few key modifications, but it is also possible that the present piece was created by the artist for Die Dame, and that the magazine demanded something more in his customary style. Certainly it represents an effort by Somov to fit more into his era—the roaring twenties—prompted by his 1924 emigration from the Soviet Union, and the economic and artistic climate he encountered in the West, so different from the pre-War Europe he had known.

We are grateful to Anna Winestein for providing this note.