#1 2012 (34)

The genre of the portrait was not essential in Korovin's work, and most of his portraits are images of people who were important in his life, especially in his artistic life. Among them are Vladimir Arkadievich Telyakovsky, director of the Imperial Theatres, his wife Gurly Loginovna Telyakovskaya, the internationally famous singer Feodor Chaliapin, and the actress Nadezhda Ivanovna Komarovskaya — all were Korovin's close friends, and like him devoted many years of their lives to theatre.

The great Russian artist Konstantin Alexeevich Korovin, a master of colour and a pioneer in scenography and theatrical scene painting, was born 150 years ago in Moscow, in the suburb of Rogozhskaya. He tried his hand in all artistic genres, and at the end of his life, after his emigration, Korovin also became famous as a writer. As his contemporaries described him, Korovin was a charming jolly fellow, welcoming and hospitable, generous in his nature, an amazing storyteller, the life and soul of any party, and a witty raconteur.

“This poor opera by Rimsky-Korsakov has been through so many ordeals! It turned out that it was not easier for the cockerel to go through theatre censorship than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. It has lost so many feathers and so many colours...” That is how a contemporary in 1909 commented on the difficult staging of the opera “The Golden Cockerel” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

The title of chapter six of "My Life in Paris" from the memoir of Ivan Mozalevsky, a well-known artist and draughtsman (the original is kept in the Manuscript Department of the Tretyakov Gallery) tells the story of the complicated relationship between Korovin and Ivan Kreitor. The excerpt published here describes dramatic events in the life of the outstanding Russian artist Konstantin Korovin, including the loss of his works that he had specifically selected for a personal exhibition at a time when his life in immigration was difficult both financially and emotionally.

The New York Jewish Museum's show last year, "Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore", proved breathtaking. The exhibition displayed only a small part of what has been called "a collection of collections" of exquisite paintings, graphic works, prints, sculpture, furniture, embroidery, rugs, and textiles. But the core of the collection, its pride and glory, is Matisse, whose portraiture, still-lifes, sculpture and landscapes were on view. The exhibition told the fascinating story of the two sisters who, led by a female instinct for buying beautiful and often useless — or at least unnecessary — things, developed a perfect taste for genuine art and became distinguished collectors of 19th- and 20th-century modern European art. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," wrote the British poet John Keats, and once the Cone sisters had experienced the joy of art, they cherished this sublime feeling throughout their lives.

2012, a year rich in anniversaries, will finish with yet another memorial event, the 180th anniversary of the birth of Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov — the extraordinary individual who created the opportunity to come to a national art gallery and to evolve, thanks to it, into "a more Russian, more learned, freer individual".