Konstantin Somov – The Lovers

“There’s the same hotel, and we can go there now

We can go there now if you want to
Through the doors of that rented room
Yeah, we stumbled through
It was only hours

It seemed such a short while
We had no time to cry
Or sit and wonder why
We had so many things started to say”

(Tindersticks, Rented Rooms)

Konstantin Somov, The Lovers, 1933

“I could have drowned in those so-called dreams”

(Tindersticks, Rented Rooms)

I have been tremendously interested in the paintings of the Russian painter Konstantin Somov the whole of last year and still his work holds a spell over me mainly because he so often paints lovers and because of the escapist, nostalgic tendencies that he exhibits in paintings parties and park scenes with obvious hints to the paintings of Antoine Watteau and Rococo in general. Love, pleasure and the eighteenth century; who can resist!? And yet, what I like about his watercolours of lovers such as the one above, “The Lovers”, from 1933 is its simplicity, rawness and intimacy. While his eighteenth-century inspired paintings have an air of glamour, fun and slight decadence to them, these kind of watercolours are pure in that they depict a genuine emotion, a softness and tenderness between lovers which doesn’t seem like a scene from a comedy. It is more as if we are peeking through the keyhole and witnessing what we ought not to be witnessing. The fact that it was set in that time and not in some idealised past era also brings this sense of intimacy and immediacy. The poses of the lovers are not theatrical as his eighteenth-century depictions of lovers often are, but tender; the man is laying his head in the lap of the women, perhaps the safest place in the world for him, a flowery meadow of calmness and inspiration. One of her bosom is touching his head, but her head is turned away, she seems shy, or closed-off perhaps, or maybe I am reading too much into it. The other elements in the watercolour; the mirror, cushions, flowers on the windowsill, opened window, all brings a sense of domesticity and joy. The medium of watercolours truly fits the gentle mood of the scene.

The watercolour made me think of Tinderstick’s song “Rented Rooms” from their album “Curtains” (1997) which is about lovers stealing time to be together, rushing to all the secretive places where they can give in to their intimate urges. The relationship in the song is one characterised by a sense of impermanence, restlessness and instability, and not of the exciting kind because the lovers have a deep desire to connect but the physical union alone leaves them feeling again restless and yearning for more. Especially the lines “We can’t afford the time to sit and cry or to wonder why…” makes me think of this watercolour because lovers are always in a frenzy, with so many kisses yet to happen, who has time to sit and think about things!? In Somov’s another watercolour, “Daphnis and Chloe”, painted in 1931 and shown bellow, we again see the lovers tenderly depicted, though there is more of an erotic touch here for sure; the man is holding the woman around the waist and closing her eager-to-chit-chat lips with a kiss until they sink down in a bed of dreams. The woman’s rosy cheeks and her golden hair cascading down her neck and breasts give her a doll-like, elegant appearance.

Konstantin Somov, Daphis and Chloe, 1931, watercolour

Zinaida Serebriakova’s Autumn Scenes: Sunflowers, Versailles Park, Lonely Fields

“A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives–all bear secret relations to our destinies.”

(François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe)

Zinaida Serebriakova, Autumn, 1910

Russian painter Zinaida Serebriakova was such a prolific, creative and inspired artist who painted a wide array of different motifs, from portraits and self-portraits, scenes from everyday life, particularly paintings of her children, to nudes, landscapes and cityscapes. I have been admiring her work for many years now but I have never written about it before. For this post I have selected four of her paintings that are autumnal. My favourite at the moment is her painting above, titled simply “Autumn” and painted in 1910. The painting shows a quiant countryside scene tinged with melancholy of the passing summer. Only the sunflower fields, little peasants houses and clouds. The motif of sunflowers, whether painted by Vincent van Gogh or Schiele or written about in the poetry of Georg Trakl, have always fascinated me because they can be interpreted in so many ways. Sunflowers can be bright and ecstatic, or they can be doomed flowers with heavy heads bowed down to the ground. Sunflowers in Serebriakova’s painting are nought but messengers of the passing of summer. The sunflowers have taken in the last rays of the summer suns and are now feeling the autumn wind on the their soft cheeks.

Zinaida Serebriakova, Versailles Park in Autumn, 1926

Painting “Versailles Park in Autumn” makes me think of the loneliness of autumn. The summer, with its abundance of warmth, flowers, colours, and scents gives us an illusion of belonging, but when the days start getting colder and darker, when the tree branches start being bare, when the crickets stop singing in the grass and the rains start falling incessantly, then we start feeling the loneliness again. The autumnal ambience contributes to the lonely, sad mood of the park, but it isn’t only the season that gives the scene its melancholy. It is also the fact that the Versailles park had seen better days. In 1926 Versailles Park wasn’t what it was in 1726 for example; the sweet glory days of Watteau and Fragonard, of stolen kisses and rustle of dresses are long since passed, but the trees and sculptures rememeber everything. Serebriakova uses an interesting viewpoint in this painting; we are almost in the same position as the sculpture and we are given the same overview of the lonesome park that the sculpture has. The sky is overcast and there are no people, only the conical evergreen shrubs are sharply pointing their heads proudly upwards. The colours are muted and dark and matching the mood of autumn.

“Because whoever has no house now will build no more.
Whoever is alone now will remain long alone
to wake, read, write long letters,
and wander in the alleys, back and forth,
restless, as the leaves flutter.”

(Rainer Maria Rilke, Autumn Day)

Zinaida Serebriakova, Green Autumn Landscape, 1908

The next landscape, “Green Autumn Landscape”, shows an early autumn scene. Nearly the entire canvas shows a vast field stretching on and on in long, neverending vertical lines. Three windmills break up the space for the moment but then the fields spread on more and more in the distance. The sky is light grey and quiet. No crows are restlessly, nervously flying low above the fields, but still there is a sense of foreboding because we know that the fogs will soon descent and hover above the fields, that the green that is so pleasant to the eyes will turn to brown soil. To me, this painting represents autumn’s sense of desolation, painted in a very simple but beautiful way. It also brings to mind many landscapes by Vincent van Gogh

Zinaida Serebriakova, Autumn Landscape, 1914

The last painting for this post, though certainly not the last of Zinaida Serebrikova on this blog, is called “Autumn Landscape” and it is rather simple in composition. The painting shows a closely cropped view of autumn trees painted in a range of shades, but the most eye-catching one is the vibrant orange. This painting, to me, represents the vibrancy of autumn. I love the details of blue on the tree trunks and some of the higher tree tops.