Portrait of hepatitis. 1899 Valentin Serov (1865-1911)
Valentin Serov – Portrait of hepatitis. 1899
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Painter: Valentin Serov
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The apogee of Valentin Serov’s marvelous gift for painting portraits was his 1899 painting Portrait of Botkina. The work received public acclaim from European bohemia and connoisseurs of the art of the secular portrait. The 1900 World’s Fair in the French capital recognized the author of the canvas’s right to the Grand Prix. Why is the portrait of Sophia Botkina so remarkable? The artist departed from the tradition of painting secular faces in their self-confident arrogance and solemn pomp.
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Description of the painting "Portrait of Sophia Botkina" by Valentin Serov
The apogee of Valentin Serov’s marvelous gift for painting portraits was his 1899 painting Portrait of Botkina. The work received public acclaim from European bohemia and connoisseurs of the art of the secular portrait. The 1900 World’s Fair in the French capital recognized the author of the canvas’s right to the Grand Prix.
Why is the portrait of Sophia Botkina so remarkable? The artist departed from the tradition of painting secular faces in their self-confident arrogance and solemn pomp. The figure of the young wife of the collector Botkin looks fragile, defenseless and modest.
It seems as if the baroque sofa on which the model has taken a seat and all her beautiful attire with its full set of gold ornaments are alien to this woman’s personality. The sofa looks inappropriately large and pretentiously tasteless, with its pompousness and expensiveness.
The model sits on one edge, almost on the edge of the furniture. It is a genius of the portraitist to take the personality of the person depicted out of the surrounding background in this way. The color helps to fully embody this idea. The background and floor are in muted browns, grays and bluish tones. The sofa is dark blue. All attention is automatically drawn to the delicate and beautiful Sofia. Her slender, collected body is dressed in a yellowish dress covered with pink buds.
The little dog beside the lady is merely a tribute to fashion, or perhaps the dictates of the married woman’s husband. From the heroine’s eyes you can think of her mental loneliness. Her self-absorbed, thoughtful gaze is modestly downcast and directed past the painting.
The ornamentality and brilliance of the painting’s objects obediently pales before the author’s illumination of the heroine’s mental world. The background and all the objects on the canvas involuntarily recede into the background, and the tender sadness in the young woman’s eyes makes the viewer feel sympathy for Sophia Botkina, a lady from centuries irrevocably lost to oblivion.
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The picture has something of this: people, woman, wear, veil, portrait, girl, dress, costume, jewelry, royalty, dancer, music, reclining, nude.
Perhaps it’s a painting of a woman in a yellow dress sitting on a blue couch with a white flower in her hair and a black cat in her hand.