K. A. Somov. A rare and only lifetime album of reproductions of watercolors and gouaches by the famous Russian artist.

K. A. Somov. A rare and only lifetime album of reproductions of watercolors and gouaches by the famous Russian artist.
Petrograd. Kamena. 1916, 33 pages, Fig. Folder, bound sheets, size 22 x 27.3 cm. The folder is in good condition, the edges on the folds are frayed, and one part along the fold line is torn off.

A rare and only lifetime album of reproductions of watercolors and gouaches by the famous Russian artist Konstantin Andreevich Somov (1869 -1939). The introductory article dedicated to the work of K. A. Somov belongs to the famous art theorist, poet and prose writer of the Silver age Mikhail Alekseyevich Kuzmin (1872-1936). The Album includes 33 reproductions of the artist's paintings, representing the early period of the master's work. The presented works of the artist, made in the period from 1896 to 1916, come from a number of private collections: A. p. Botkina, V. O. Girshman, A. A. Korovin, I. A. Morozov, I. I. Troyanovsky, E. E. Lancer, and the Russian Museum. Among them are watercolors and gouaches, oil paintings, such as "After the rain", "on the terrace", "rainbow", "Walk in winter", "Lady in a blue dress", "Poets", "Witchcraft", "Natalia Pavlovna", "A. S. Pushkin", "Grove on the beach", "Lady in a pink dress", "Sleeping woman in a blue dress", "Lady with a mask", "Lovers", "mocked kiss", "Landscape with rainbow", "sleeping young woman", "magic garden", "winter", "Harlequinade". Most of these illustrations were later published in Somov's Book of the Marquise (1918). All reproductions are made in color on coated paper and pasted on sheets of cardboard. Among the most famous paintings written by masters before 1916, which can be seen in this album – "Lady in a blue dress" (portrait of the artist E. M. Martynova). The retrospective portrait created By K. Somov has become a new phenomenon in Russian art. Work on this amazing picture lasted three years - from 1897 to 1900. Martynova's thin, intellectual face, her fragile and beautiful appearance, became for Somov the highest embodiment of femininity for the rest of his life. In addition, the best somovian "ladies" that are also on the album include "Sleeping woman in a blue dress" and "Lady in a pink dress". According to A. Benoit, Somov was a master and magician of lines.