"Fireworks" By ~ Konstantin Andreevic Somov ~ 1869 - 1939.

Constantin Andreevich Somov was born in St. Petersburg on November 30, 1869 into the family of the senior curator at the Hermitage, artist and art historian, Andrei Ivanovich Somov and his wife, Nadezhda Constantinovna, an excellent musician. The family had a big collection of paintings, etchings, watercolors, big library; the artists were frequent guests in the house. Constantin started to learn to play piano, singing, and painting early.
From 1888 till 1897, he studied at the Academy of Arts, where from 1894 he took a course at Ilya Repin’s studio. Later he wrote that the first five years in the Academy were a lost and fruitless time. Nevertheless he took the studies very seriously and got a number of awards in the academy. The work with Repin can be felt in some of his paintings of those years, e.g. portraits of N. Ober, wife of the sculptor Ober (1896), Portrait of Father (1897), Self-Portrait (1898).

Since his childhood Somov was a friend of Alexander Benois; during their students’ years they often gathered together in the house of Benois, there Somov got acquainted with Sergei Dyagilev, future theatre interprener, and Lev Bakst.

Mademoiselle de Lancey ~ By Carolus Duran ~ 1838 - 1913.

Mademoiselle de Lancey, Alice Tahl dite de Lancey (1851-1913)

Auteur :

Carolus-Duran (1838-1917)

Crédit photographique :

(C) RMN-Grand Palais / Agence Bulloz

Période :

19e siècle, période contemporaine de 1789 à 1914

Date :

1876

Technique/Matière :

huile sur toile

Vintage Ladies dressed in the Colour of Summer rain.

"The New Bracelet" By ~ Frans Verhas ~ 1827 - 1897.

The New Bracelet.

Jeune Fille.

Having trained with his father, he studied in Brussels before settling permanently at Schaerbeek in 1867. In Brussels he specialized almost exclusively in producing genre paintings of bourgeois subjects. His compositions were skilfully executed and he showed a keen eye for detail, portraying sumptuous interiors decorated with tapestries, satins, animal pelts and marble as a backdrop to playing children and elegant women dressed in crinolines, or striking aristocratic poses: for example The Lion (1874; Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.) and the Inconsolable Woman (1878; Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.). He also painted historical subjects, which he treated with a powerful sense of realism (e.g. Louis XIV before Dendermonde in 1667 , 1881; and the League of Noblemen ; both Dendermonde, Stadhuis), and executed portraits (e.g. Mariam Van Duyse , 1852; Dendermonde, Vrouwekerk).