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Artist or Maker: Konstantin Andreevich Somov (1869-1939)

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Description: Pastorale russe
signed in Cyrillic and dated 'K. Somov/1922' (lower left)
oil on canvas
15 x 18 1/2 in. (38.1 x 47 cm.)

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Exhibited: Paris, Galerie A. Sambon, La danse à travers les ages (exhibition label attached to the stretcher).
Berlin, A private residence, Russian exhibition, February - March 1930, no. 2 (exhibition label attached to the stretcher).

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Notes: 'Pastorale Russe' appears to have influenced Somov's later illustrations for Longus's 'Daphnis and Chloe' executed 1930-31. The image of the young man leaning over his expectant lover as she reclines is at once suggestive yet strangely innocent. As Somov himself stated concerning the composition repeated in 'Daphnis and Chloe'; 'There is eroticism in the bodies but it is discreet.' (The diary of K. A. Somov, 11 January 1931, as reproduced in J. N. Podkopaeva and A. N. Sveshnikova, Somov, 1979, pp. 376-377).

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