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Sleeping Woman in the Grass signed in Cyrillic and dated 'K. Somov 1913' (lower right) oil on canvas 271/4x191/4in. (69.2x48.9cm.) NOTES Konstantin Andreevich Somov (1869-1939) was born in St. Petersburg, his father, Andrei Somov, was a curator of the Hermitage. After receiving a general education in K.I. Mai's private grammar school, he entered the Academy of Arts, where from 1894 till 1897 he studied under Il'ya Repin. In February 1897, not having graduated from the Academy, Somov left for Paris, but in the autumn of 1899 he returned and settled in St. Petersburg for a long time. While still at grammar school, Somov had been friendly with Alexander Benois, V. Nuvel and D. Filosofov, and later with Sergei Diaghilev-the founders of the 'World of Art' society. The 'World of Art' was a heterogenous organization with contradictory ideological principles, like many other artistic groups which sprang up at the turn of the century. For Somov the most important and precious thing in painting was the 'cult of beauty', which was associated with the contemplative attitude to the world, and especially to the world of things. He observed life from a kind of artificially created 'realm of beauty'. As Repin's pupil he revealed various sides of his talent. He was keen on portraiture, rejoiced in elegant lines and was sensitive to the beauty of nature. He painted charming harlequins and eighteenth-century ladies and bosquets, and in these small, elegant works there emerged a curious world of the past. Perhaps without realizing it completly himself, Somov looked at things around him with bitter irony. The artist creates his own 'Somovian' world. His small canvases show ladies in rosy and silvery silks and crinolines, tired and lost in dreams. Lovers talk in whispers, pass secret notes and steal kisses. Somov feasts his eyes on this life and at the same time treats such 'toy' emotions with irony. Anguish and morbidity are even more prominent features in his 'Harlequinade' series. The critic S. Ernst wrote of Somov: 'His art gives off a sharp odour of falling roses and decay'. Somov's work displayed features that were very typical of the age-an age where Sergei Diaghilev, one of the organizers of the 'World of Art', understood and assessed with great precision: 'We live in a terrible time of change; we are condemned to die in order that the new culture, which shall take from us what remains of our weary wisdom, should live, history says so, and aesthetics confirms it. We are witnessing the greatest historical moment of stock-taking and ending Somov's art reflected the complexity and sharp contrasts of the age. Apart from works which manifested his oversensitivity and tendency to hide from the surrounding world, he produced brilliantly painted portraits and landscapes; they will always remain landmarks in Russian realist art of the turn of the century. Konstantin Somov died in Paris in 1939. The artist often returned to his favourite themes which were very successful with the public and he often (sometimes, several times in the same year) repeated them for different clients. Consequently, several parts of one composition were translated practically without alteration into other works. See, Christie's London, 5 October 1989, lot 298.