It's hard to say how much there is portraits of Anna Akhmatova, - it was written famous artists beginning of the twentieth century: A. Modigliani, Z. Serebryakova, N. Altman, Y. Annenkov, K. Petrov-Vodkin and many others, and on all canvases it is completely different. An embossed profile, a hooked nose, straight bangs, royal posture - her features are familiar to every schoolchild. But there is something elusive, changeable, which always seems to elude artists. And the mystery of Anna Akhmatova remains unsolved.
In 1910, during honeymoon with N. Gumilev in Paris, Anna Akhmatova met a young, not yet famous and poor by the artist Amedeo Modigliani. He offered to paint her portrait, and she agreed. Akhmatova never spoke about what feelings arose between them then, but the artist painted several portraits of her and continued to write letters to her after her departure.
Gumilyov was jealous of his wife and called Modigliani “an eternally drunk monster.” But a year later they quarreled, and Akhmatova again went to Paris to see Modigliani. They spent three months together. Unfortunately, most of his works did not survive - either they burned down during a fire, or were carefully hidden by the poetess herself. It was 16 pencil drawings, one of which she always carried with her.
In 1914, one of the most famous portraits Akhmatova, painted by N. Altman. He saw her regal, majestic, self-confident, but at the same time fragile, defenseless and feminine. The artist tried to convey her very essence, the image he created is so attractive that many call this work the best portrait of the poetess.
In the fall of the same year, artist Olga Kardovskaya wrote in her diary: “Today Akhmatova posed for me. She is uniquely beautiful, very tall, slender, the charm of a model reigns over me, it’s scary to be distracted, I want to work and live this work.” The image she created is somewhat idealized and softened.
In 1921, the image in the portraits changed significantly, it became more and more tragic, sorrow and doom. About the pen drawing of Yuri Annenkov, E. Zamyatin wrote: “A portrait of Akhmatova - or, more precisely: a portrait of Akhmatova’s eyebrows. From them - like clouds - light, heavy shadows across the face, and in them - so much loss. They are like a key in a musical play: this key is set - and you hear what the eyes, the mourning of the hair, the black rosary on the crest are saying.” Annenkov said that he saw her “as a sad beauty, seemingly a modest recluse, dressed in the fashionable dress of a socialite.” This portrait was sold at auction in 2013 auction house Sotheby's for $1.380 million.
In 1922, two new portraits appeared, creating radically opposite images. Akhmatova Zinaida Serebryakova – touching, tender, unusually feminine. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin saw her completely differently; his portrait depicts a restrained and strict stoic, courageously enduring trials, a poet absorbed in what is happening inside. His Akhmatova is devoid of attractiveness and feminine charm; her face has more masculine features.
In 1927-1928 a series of graphic portraits of Akhmatova is written by the artist N. Tyrsa. These portraits are laconic, but very expressive. They are made in an unusual manner - soot from a kerosene lamp combined with watercolors. The artist created a subtle, strict, poetic, spiritualized and mournful image of the poet.
The 1964 portrait by the artist Langleben shows a woman exhausted by illness and adversity, but not broken, who survived the death of her husband, the arrest and imprisonment of her son, literary persecution and oblivion. Later, her talent was recognized all over the world, but recognition came to Modigliani only after her death.
The images of the wonderful poetess Anna Akhmatova appear before us in numerous portraits, painted from life, and therefore especially interesting. In 1910, in Paris, Akhmatova met the artist Modigliani and often visited his studio. He drew several drawings from it, one of which was described by the poet Osip Mandelstam as follows:
Half-turned, oh sadness, she looked at the indifferent. Falling from the shoulders, the pseudo-classical shawl turned to stone...
Subsequently, her portraits were created by many prominent artists of the beginning of the century. But the most famous of those painted before the revolution is a portrait painted by the artist Altman.
This was in 1913 in St. Petersburg.
On a low island, which, like a raft,
Stayed in the lush Neva delta...
That is, on Vasilyevsky Island, where Anna Akhmatova lived in a student dormitory. Artist Nathan Altman lived nearby in a rooming house. Altman's workshop was located in the attic, and Akhmatova described how she
Through the window onto the roof
And she walked along the cornice above the mortal abyss,
To see the snow, the Neva and the clouds...
They met briefly two years earlier in Paris. He was still very young then - 22 years old, a native of Vinnitsa, a careless student art school in Odessa. He went to Paris in "search for himself." He studied in the museums of the great Spaniards: Velazquez, Zurbaran, El Greco. However, he was attracted to the “Cubists” with their mathematically rigorous analysis of form.
(Cubism originated in the first decade of the 20th century, this is one of the most distinctive movements of modernism. The creators of this movement were the artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The Cubists simplified objects to geometric shapes - a ball, cube, cylinder, prism. The world they created in his paintings, was faceted and angular)
Altman wrote then carefully and conscientiously, but with little inspiration. His canvases included portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. Altman had a contradictory character: he was pulled in different directions and wanted to connect the incompatible. Therefore, upon returning to Russia, he either exhibited his works in the World of Arts association, or joined the avant-garde artists. In St. Petersburg, he moved in the circle of artistic bohemia - artists, writers, actors. They loved him, he was sociable, kind, handsome. They say that every time Osip Mandelstam met him, he recited comic poems of his own composition:
This is the artist Altman,
A very old man.
In German it means Altmann
A very old man.
He's an old school artist
I worked my whole century,
That's why he's not funny
A very old man.
In 1913, the “very old man” was 24 years old. He met Akhmatova by chance - in the artistic basement "Stray Dog" and was amazed by her appearance and immediately asked Akhmatova to pose, she agreed, and soon long sessions began in the attic workshop on Vasilyevsky Island.
Under the very roof in a dirty, noisy house,
Where he, like a siskin, whistled in front of the easel
And complained cheerfully and sadly
He spoke about the joy that never existed.
Akhmatova at this time was already bearing the burden of her sudden fame, which gave this young woman, the same age as the artist, something regal. Her constant bangs were praised by Blok and Mandelstam. In one of the poems of that time, Akhmatova describes herself as follows:
There is a row of small rosary beads on my neck, I hide my hands in a wide muff,
The eyes look absently and never cry again.
And it seems that the face is paler from the lilac silk,
My uncurled bangs almost reach my eyebrows....
This is how she is presented in Altman’s portrait. But the artist did not want to limit himself only to conveying an expressive appearance; it was important for him to convey the essence of character, the poetry of the soul.
The viewer's attention is drawn to the strict silhouette of the model, a confident woman, almost acrobatically flexible, graceful and feminine. In the background, crushing crystalline structures flicker, creating the likeness of fairy tale kingdom. Blue intensity and yellow flowers The dress contrasts with the muted translucent greenish and blue tones of the background, sparkling on the canvas like precious stones.
When this portrait was painted, Akhmatova lived alone in St. Petersburg, having left Tsarskoye Selo and the house where she lived with Gumilyov. Her final break with Gumilyov came and a different life began, as it were, and she experienced a feeling of new birth - and in some incomprehensible way Altman saw and captured this feeling in the portrait. Akhmatova wrote about Altman’s portrait:
How in the mirror I looked anxiously at the gray canvas, and with every week
My resemblance to my new image became more and more bitter and strange...
This is one of Altman's best portraits, one of those in which his passion for combining the incompatible gave rise to an unexpected effect. The portrait of Akhmatova is typically secular and at the same time avant-garde-cubic. Akhmatova later recalled Altman with sadness and tenderness:
Now I don’t know where the dear artist is, but I feel that our Muses are friendly
Carefree and captivating friendship, like girls who have never known love.
Akhmatova loved to pose. In the fall of 1914, she posed for the artist Kardovskaya. In her diary, the artist wrote this: “Today Akhmatova posed for me. She is uniquely beautiful, very tall, slender, the charm of a model reigns over me, it’s scary to be distracted, I want to work and live with this work.” However, later the artist’s daughter will say: “No matter how much I like Akhmatova’s portrait of my mother from an artistic point of view, I still believe that Akhmatova as her friends, poets, and admirers of those years knew her is conveyed not in this portrait, but in the portrait by Altman "
The poet N. Gumilev assessed the portrait of Kardovskaya differently:
You are captivated by the play of colors and lines, you have both joy and melancholy in your soul,
When in the solemn and blue spring the clouds freeze so clearly in the sky...
And you are sad that the world is inexhaustible, that you cannot go through it to the end,
That from what was once paradise, new paths are now being taken...
The poems are permeated with a premonition of the end of that imaginary harmonious world. Time turned out to be inexorable. The revolution and wars shook the world. During these years (from 1915 to 1921) there was a breakdown of all the usual ideas for Akhmatova about the life and purpose of a poet. Many friends went into exile, they stubbornly invited her to come with them. But nothing could tear Akhmatova away from Russia.
Leave your land, deaf and sinful, leave Russia forever..."
But indifferently and calmly with my hands I closed my hearing,
So that the sorrowful spirit is not defiled by this unworthy speech.
Anna Akhmatova's character traits and appearance changed, she more often closed in on herself, the image became tragic, it felt some kind of sorrow, detachment from the past and determination to be persistent to the end. In 1922 new image Akhmatova, who suffered a lot, but remained faithful to her attachment to her homeland, was created by the artist Petrov-Vodkin. The restrained, strict and decisive image of the poetess created by the artist is the pinnacle of his portrait art. First of all, this is the image of a creative, intellectual person, a personality that time created at the turn of two historical eras. In the blue of Akhmatova’s wise eyes, in her sadness, spiritual beauty is revealed. Her muse represents sorrow.
Give me the bitter years of illness, suffocation, insomnia, fever,
Take away the child, the friend, and the mysterious gift of song
- So I pray during your liturgy after so many tedious days,
So that the cloud over dark Russia becomes a cloud in the glory of the rays.
In 1928, the artist Tyrsa created three graphic portraits of Anna Akhmatova in black tones. The artist created a subtle poetic image poetesses. The black paint under the artist’s brush, sometimes sadder, sometimes transparent, conveys the grace of the pose, the pearly airiness of the light, and the precision of the profile. Using modest means, Tyrsa created an unusually spiritual, strict and feminine image of Akhmatova, in which the artist traced the life of female soul, still full of unspent power of love and tenderness.
The poet Mandelstam expressed his impression of Tyrsovsky’s image of Akhmatova:
You appeared to me today like a black angel in the snow,
And I cannot hide the fact that you have the sorrow of the Lord.
Over the years, the special power of influence of the poetess’s personality did not pass. New terrible experiences did not break her spirit. In 1939, her portrait was painted by the artist Osmerkin. Here she is classically majestic, calm, her face thoughtful and stern. And, despite the fact that the flowering bushes are fragrant in the window, the image cannot be called lyrical. Akhmatova is collected internally and, as it were, ready for new blows of fate and for new battles. These traits of her character manifested themselves with particular force during the war years.
Article from the archive.. .
She was lucky in many ways: she was born into the family of a well-educated hereditary nobleman - a lover of poetry, her mother was a creative person, and was distantly related to the Russian Sappho - Anna Bunina, considered the first Russian poetess.
And besides, she was born in Odessa, a city of poets and artists, at that time, along with Moscow and St. Petersburg, a showcase of Russian art.
She was lucky later, in childhood, when the family moved to the poetic Tsarskoye Selo, and Anna became a student at the Mariinsky Gymnasium.
I learned to read using the alphabet of Leo Tolstoy. At the age of 5 she already spoke French - nothing surprising for that time, but young Anna was already composing poetry, and was surprised to discover that some words from the Russian language rhyme with French...
But, unlike others, she did not show her early poems to anyone, and therefore did not publish them.
Portraits by Zinaida Serebryakova (left) and Annenkov. 1922
But I don’t want to discuss the poetess Anna Akhmatova - for this everyone has had decades of knowledge of her work.
Of course, everyone has their favorite poets, usually there are many of them, and they each have their own favorite lines.
I will cite two well-known lines from Akhmatova, which, one way or another, are necessary for me for the further story, and which, perhaps, will tell you, each in your own way, about something:
If only you knew what kind of rubbish
Poems grow without shame...
Once upon a time, while still a student, having been carried away for some time by the poems of the Great Poet, I suddenly realized: she lived above the masses (even, in general, the intelligentsia), within her narrow educated creative circle, and wrote not for the masses, but for those who were surrounded by her...
It was difficult in Soviet era, but she tried to preserve the poetics of life.
Did she succeed?
If we judge formally - by her biography, then no - the fate of the poetess, as we know, was tragic.
However, she herself was not imprisoned or exiled - she was “beaten” where it hurt most – the people close to her.
Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaya. On the left is Nikolai Gumilyov. The portraits were made at approximately the same time - 1910-1912.
Her husband Nikolai Gumilyov was shot.
Her favorite person - Nikolai Punin, after 3 arrests, after the war - in the “cold summer of ’53” he died in a camp.
Her only son Lev Gumilyov spent many years in prison...
And this is the only character in her environment that I don’t want to talk about due, perhaps, to personal perception...
Her life, her grief - in the poem "Requiem".
Akhmatova lived in a creative environment, which, especially at that time, included many artists.
She, her profile, proudly planted once (at birth) on a slender, somewhat elongated figure, head - could not help but attract the attention of the masters of painting.
She was an excellent character - with character, hands, neck, as I said - head, and most importantly - with some incredibly lively eyes, sometimes as if frozen for a while.
Creative people saw in these expressive eyes ideas, plans, unimaginable poetic colors for people, their actions, simple and complex phenomena, human dramas, love...
The men from Akhmatova’s entourage were in love with this “flexible titan.”
Why was she called that? It remains a mystery - perhaps Akhmatova sometimes dressed like Spanish gypsies or danced Spanish gypsy dances.
According to contemporaries, only Blok and Bunin were not “caught in her net.”
Bunin, judging by his poem, considered Akhmatova thin, pale, nervous, feigned and bloodless.
Modigliani, Savely Sorin (Russian portrait artist who created a magnificent engraving of the poetess), Petrov-Vodkin, Annenkov, Fyodor (Fidelio) Bruni and others loved her and not only worshiped her, but sought to depict her and paint a portrait.
The famous Russian artist Zinaida Serebryakova in 1922, having once seen Akhmatova, exclaimed: “Anna, how much you look like me!”
And she drew... a self-portrait, which she signed: “Portrait of A.A. Akhmatova. 1922". (You see it above).
And later, whenever she drew her new (for a while) friend, it turned out to be Serebryakova herself.
Nevertheless, these portraits and sketches are interesting.
But even earlier, in 1921, Anna Akhmatova met her peer Yuri Pavlovich Annenkov, talented artist, who made the creation of portraits of Soviet and party leaders, leaders of science and culture the main thing in his work.
His portrait “A.A. Akhmatova. 1921”, from my point of view, is magnificent.
Nathan Altman. Self-portrait and Portrait of Akhmatova.
Anna Akhmatova met another one of her peers, Nathan Altman, in 1911 in Paris.
Anna was then an unknown 20-year-old “girl from Russia” who came to visit the 27-year-old Modigliani.
Modigliani took an active part in the noisy life of Montmartre, and often took with him to feasts a “guest from Russia” who spoke excellent French.
At one of them, he introduced Anna to Nathan, his friend from one of his previous apartments (which, by the way, he often changed).
Nathan was an “ardent avant-garde artist,” and when he invited Anna to paint her portrait, Modigliani laughed heartily - they say, you are fond of cubism - how can you cope with such a figure?
But Anna felt sorry for the skinny guy from Vinnitsa, and she agreed.
I’ll put her on a chair so that there’s a bend. – Nathan answered his Italian friend with concern.
And planted...
It so happened that the general public (bohemians, of course) saw this portrait for the first time in 1915 at an exhibition in one of the home salons in St. Petersburg.
And he - this portrait, did not look like... Altman's hand and style.
But strict salon art critics decided that Nathan had created the most poetic portrait of the young Akhmatova. He managed to show her complex poetic lines with simple (like an avant-garde) geometric lines, and the various blue shades of the background of the picture (there are 3 or more of them) convey the depth of her poetry.
And even Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, having once seen a portrait of Anna Akhmatova, probably the same one painted by Nathan Altman, painted her in an unusually strict manner for him.
On the left is a Portrait of Akhmatova by Petrov-Vodkin, on the right is Sorin.
Petrov-Vodkin never loved Akhmatova as a woman. By definition... Perhaps that's why he gave it masculine traits faces...
And, being for many “a thing in itself,” he showed the poetess in her “favorite colors,” poetically thoughtful, a creator, imitating the Greek style.
And yet, of the portraits from this period of Anna Akhmatova’s life, I like more than others the portrait by Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaya, whose husband, Dmitry Kardovsky, a nobleman, was a friend of Repin. (You see it above).
If we follow the chronology, we will now be transported to Paris, to Amedeo Modigliani.
But if you are interested in whether Anna Akhmatova loved anyone, then let’s stay in St. Petersburg for a while and turn our attention to Boris Anrep.
Akhmatova was introduced to Anrep by his closest friend, poet, literary critic and literary theorist Nikolai Nedobrovo, with whom Akhmatova had a close relationship in 1914-15, and, according to their contemporaries, an intimate friendship-love.
In one of Nedobrovo’s letters to Anrep dated April 27, 1914, there are the following words: “...You simply can’t call her beautiful, but her appearance is so interesting that it’s worth making a Leonardo drawing, a Gainsborough portrait in oil, and an icon in tempera, and even more so.” “The only thing is to place it in the most significant place of the mosaic depicting the world of poetry.”
Boris Anrep is the darling of fate, a favorite of women, tall, athletic, temperamental, cheerful, self-confident, romantic, keen on art, with a keen sense of poetry.
Akhmatova dedicated the most poems to him - 36, among which are Akhmatova’s happiest and brightest poems about love from The White Flock. There are 17 of them there, and another 14 in Podorozhnik.
Somehow we managed to separate
And put out the hateful fire.
My eternal enemy, it's time to learn
You really need someone to love.
But in Anrep, nevertheless, there was more of a womanizer than of that beloved to whom Akhmatova gave her treasured black ring in 1916.
Modern artists paint Anna Akhmatova. On the left is Vladimir Syskov. Anna Akhmatova. 1989, on the right - Georgy Ginzburg-Voskov. Anna Akhmatova. Summer 1965. Paper, pencil.
She attributed mysterious powers to him.
As I sat at dinner,
I looked into black eyes,
No matter how much you ate or drank
At the oak table.
Like under a patterned tablecloth
She held out a black ring...
But he lost it...
Despite all the promises
And taking the ring off my hand,
Forgot me at the bottom...
In 1954, Boris Anrep, who had already been living in Ireland for decades, received an order from the Cathedral of Christ the Lord in the small Irish town of Mullingar.
On the mosaic panel depicting the “Introduction of the Virgin Mary into the Temple,” in the center of the composition is Saint Anne with a large halo around her head.
The portrait resemblance to Anna Akhmatova is beyond doubt.
No - we are still going to Paris in 1910.
Let's omit the high style of dating, courtship, conversations about the poetry of Laforgue, Mallarmé, Baudelaire, telepathy, reading Verlaine's poems in two voices...
Not to mention what we would like to guess, to be sure - it was exactly like that, that, probably, it might not have happened. It's none of our business...
Anna wrote to her friend - “... the divine in Modigliani sparkled through some kind of darkness, he is completely unlike anyone else in the world, he is a beggar, and it is not clear how he lives.”
Anna recalled later - as an artist he did not have even a shadow of recognition, he lived in the dead end of Falguières, he was so poor that in the Luxembourg Gardens we always sat on a bench, and not on paid chairs, as was customary.
At this time, Modigliani raved about Egypt, often took Akhmatova to the Louvre to look at the Egyptian department, painted her head in the attire of Egyptian queens and dancers...
Almost nothing of these drawings has survived.
Modigliani. Akhmatova
He drew Anna not from life, but in a small makeshift workshop - and gave these drawings to her. There were 16 of them...
Modigliani asked Anna to frame the drawings and hang them in her home.
Alas, Modigliani’s drawings, according to Akhmatova, became another victim of the Revolution - they died in a Tsarskoye Selo house - hanging on the wall.
The one she was embarrassed to hang up survived, and it lay between the pages of some album with reproductions.
According to art critics, the surviving drawing is less foreshadowing than the others of Modigliani's future paintings with nudes...
Akhmatova’s husband Nikolai Gumilyov, apparently jealous of her youthful days, called Modigliani “an eternally drunken monster.”
And Akhmatova recalled:
He said that I have no rivals.
I am not an earthly woman for him...
The years flew by... On April 29, 1965, at the end of the day, Anna Akhmatova suddenly said to Anatoly Naiman - let's call a taxi and go to the notary's office.
She wanted to change and have her previously written will certified by a notary.
And when they left the notary on the street, she said sadly: “What kind of inheritance can we talk about? Take Modi’s drawing under your arm and leave.”...
On the right is a drawing by Modigliani, with which Akhmatova “wanted to leave”...
Nikolai Khardzhiev - Russian writer, historian latest literature and art, believes that the famous drawing of Anna’s nude, namely that she wanted to “take under her arm and leave,” is similar in its composition to preparatory drawing for sculpture.
Khardzhiev believed that Modigliani’s image of Akhmatova resembles the allegorical figure of “Night” on the roof of the sarcophagus of Giuliano Medici by Michelangelo.
Like “Night,” Akhmatova’s figure rests obliquely.
When one of the publishers in the early 60s asked Akhmatova to write “an essay about meetings with Modigliani,” she, after thinking, refused - she no longer remembered much, and what she remembered was not for everyone...
For some time she hid the surviving drawing. But then, when she “grew up,” it hung at her head until her death.
There is, however, a conspiracy theory (how greedy people are for them).
It reads: Modigliani's 15 drawings from Anna Akhmatova's nudes were not lost. Why? Manuscripts don't burn! It’s logical... If you step away from reality and go into the world of your favorite (or not favorite) literature.
Okay, let’s say, but then – where did they go?
The drawings, which, as the theory goes, were evidence and should not have been shown to anyone, were hidden for the time being by the young wife of Akhmatova’s son, Lev Gumilyov.
This theory is supported by the fact that they most likely were not edged or hung - they were no less - and, rather, more - erotic than the one that survived.
Oh sweet clues,
Where should I hide you?
It is also suggested that Akhmatova did not bring them to Russia at all, but left them in France. From whom?
Akhmatova's contemporaries post-war years they remember: her stories about the death of the drawings are always different, often contradictory, and not very plausible.
Sometimes she said, “they burned down along with Tsarist Russia,” sometimes, they say, the Red Army soldiers “smoked them into cigarettes”...
But today they were published... Where did they come from? Is it really true that the descendants of Gumilev the son and his widow sold them abroad?
It is known that Anna Akhmatova respected her husband, but did not love her.
Before her marriage, she wrote in one of her letters: “...I am poisoned for life, the poison of unrequited love is bitter... Will I be able to start living again? Of course not! Gumilyov is my destiny, and I humbly surrender to it. Don't judge me if you can. I swear to you, everything that is sacred to me, that this unfortunate man will be happy with me.”
Saryan. Akhmatova
She later said that their marriage was not the beginning, but the “beginning of the end” of their relationship. The “unhappy man” was not happy with her.
However, just like she is with him.
From memories: “She was very beautiful, everyone on the street looked at her. Men, as is customary in Paris, loudly expressed their admiration, women measured her with envy with their eyes. She was tall, slender and flexible... She was wearing white dress and a white wide-brimmed straw hat with a large white ostrich feather - this feather was brought to her by her husband, the poet Gumilyov, who had just returned from Abyssinia.”
But Modigliani, and not Gumilyov, was constantly present in her poems:
Watch the stripes fade
In the sunset darkness the pine needles,
Drunk with the sound of a voice,
Similar to yours.
And know that all is lost
That life is a damned hell!
Oh I was sure
That you will come back.
And yet, let’s put aside conspiracy theories - I offer you my version of the appearance of drawings with naked Anna.
Modigliani usually made not one or even two sketches of nature, but several drawings.
He mercilessly destroyed those he didn’t love, and sold those he didn’t want to part with.
It is known that Dr. Paul Alexander was his regular customer. The doctor was not very rich, and therefore Modigliani sold him paintings at a paltry price.
This is how painter Natalia Tretyakova imagines the relationship between Akhmatova and Modigliani.
However, Akhmatova later claimed that Dr. Alexander did not know her, but once he saw her, he asked the artist who was this slender young woman with a tight bun of pulled dark hair at the back of her head?
And admired her profile...
In the Parisian newspaper “Russian Thought” for October 20, 1993, the Genoese Slavist Dokukina-Bobel stated that at the exhibition in Venice last summer of the same year, Anna Akhmatova was depicted in Modigliani’s drawings from the collection of Dr. Paul Alexander, presented by his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In 2003 at Christie's auction in New York paintings by Amedeo Modigliani depicting female nudes were sold for incredible prices, the most expensive for $27 million. It became a sensation then.
But among them there was not a single canvas from the famous series of paintings and drawings depicting Anna Akhmatova, and not a single one of Modigliano’s nudes even remotely resembles the spiritualized Great Akhmatova.
We repeated the publication from 2 years ago.
ALTMAN Nathan Isaevich (1889-1970)
"...Altman was struck by her appearance, her magnificent ability to bear the burden of her sudden fame, which already gave this young woman, his peer, something regal. When Altman asked Akhmatova to pose for him, she agreed, although she was already the owner of a stunning Modigliani drawing, which, however, Altman could not see: Anna Andreevna, the young wife of Lev Gumilyov, could not show it to anyone. At first, N. Altman made a friendly cartoon, little known today. The famous portrait appeared later, when long sessions began in the attic workshop on Vasilyevsky Island. , where Anna Akhmatova lived in student dormitory. Nathan Altman lived nearby, either in a “furnished house in New York,” as Akhmatova later recalled, or in the furnished rooms “Prince’s Court,” as he himself recalled. Altman painted a woman of the futuristic era, who is akin to urban rhythm; wrote in her self-confidence, health, almost acrobatic flexibility of the figure. Any portrait has its own subtext and hidden drama. And one can only guess about the motives that forced Altman to rethink the image of Akhmatova. When this portrait was painted, Anna Andreevna lived alone in St. Petersburg, having left Tsarskoye Selo and Gumilyov’s house. Her final break with Gumilyov came, and it was as if another life was beginning, she experienced a feeling of new birth, and, probably, she herself had no idea what it would be like. At least this conclusion can be drawn from Akhmatova’s poems about this portrait of himself:
Under the very roof in a busy, noisy house,
Where he, like a siskin, whistled in front of the easel,
And he complained cheerfully and sadly
He spoke about the joy that never existed.
As if in a mirror, I looked anxiously
On a gray canvas, and with every week
The resemblance became more and more bitter and strange
Mine with my image is new.
Now I don’t know where the dear artist is,
With whom I'm from the blue attic
Through the window onto the roof
And she walked along the cornice above the mortal abyss,
To see the snow, the Neva and the clouds, -
But I feel that our Muses are friendly
Carefree and captivating friendship,
Like girls who have never known love.
(Anna Akhmatova)
This is one of Altman's best portraits, one of those where his passion for combining the incompatible produced an unexpected effect. If we omit the lyrical subtext, then the portrait of Akhmatova is typical social portrait and at the same time - an avant-garde portrait. There is both poignancy and aesthetic justification in such a mixture of styles. Akhmatova’s portrait became a sensation at one of the art exhibitions in St. Petersburg in 1915. Famous critic L. Bruni wrote that “this is not a thing, but a milestone in art”... The power of Altman’s portrait not only cemented the image of Akhmatova in the minds of her contemporaries, but turned out to be hypnotic many years later, when other portraits of her already existed, and Akhmatova herself was already another. The portrait was remembered even five years after its appearance: “I know you and love you from the day I saw your portrait of Akhmatova,” wrote Vyach. Ivanov in the artist's album in 1920. They remembered it even twenty years later. M.V. Alpatov, who first saw Akhmatova in the 30s, recalled the same portrait: “At that moment the door opened, and she herself entered the room, silently and easily, as if she had stepped out of Altman’s portrait.” It is interesting that Akhmatova herself never liked Altman’s portrait, repeating again and again that she does not like Altman’s portrait “like any stylization in art.” She was intolerant of the mythological image that had developed back in the 1910s and which followed Akhmatova all her life, although her own fate was not at all based on this portrait."
It seems like a quarter to five
I fell in love with you
Anna Akhmatova.
(Marina Tsvetaeva)
February 11, 1915 12 portraits of Anna Akhmatova - 12 attempts to capture the elusive: from carelessness to doom
It is difficult to say how many portraits of Anna Akhmatova there are - she was painted by famous artists of the early twentieth century: A. Modigliani, Z. Serebryakova, N. Altman, Yu. Annenkov, K. Petrov-Vodkin and many others, and in all the canvases she absolutely different. An embossed profile, a hooked nose, straight bangs, royal posture - her features are familiar to every schoolchild. But there is something elusive, changeable, which always seems to elude artists. And the mystery of Anna Akhmatova remains unsolved.
In 1910, during her honeymoon with N. Gumilev in Paris, Anna Akhmatova met the young, not yet famous and poor artist Amedeo Modigliani. He offered to paint her portrait, and she agreed. Akhmatova never spoke about what feelings arose between them then, but the artist painted several portraits of her and continued to write letters to her after her departure.
Gumilyov was jealous of his wife and called Modigliani “an eternally drunk monster.” But a year later they quarreled, and Akhmatova again went to Paris to see Modigliani. They spent three months together. Unfortunately, most of his works did not survive - either they burned down during a fire, or were carefully hidden by the poetess herself. It was 16 pencil drawings, one of which she always carried with her.
In 1914, one of the most famous portraits of Akhmatova by N. Altman was created. He saw her regal, majestic, self-confident, but at the same time fragile, defenseless and feminine. The artist tried to convey her very essence, the image he created is so attractive that many call this work the best portrait of the poetess.
In the fall of the same year, artist Olga Kardovskaya wrote in her diary: “Today Akhmatova posed for me. She is uniquely beautiful, very tall, slender, the charm of a model reigns over me, it’s scary to be distracted, I want to work and live this work.” The image she created is somewhat idealized and softened.
In 1921, the image in the portraits changed significantly, it became more and more tragic, sorrow and doom. About the pen drawing of Yuri Annenkov, E. Zamyatin wrote: “A portrait of Akhmatova - or, more precisely: a portrait of Akhmatova’s eyebrows. From them - like clouds - light, heavy shadows across the face, and in them - so much loss. They are like a key in a musical play: this key is set - and you hear what the eyes, the mourning of the hair, the black rosary on the crest say.” Annenkov said that he saw her “as a sad beauty, seemingly a modest recluse, dressed in the fashionable dress of a socialite.” This portrait was sold at Sotheby’s auction house in 2013 for $1.380 million.
On the left is Z. Serebryakova. Anna Akhmatova, 1922. On the right is K. Petrov-Vodkin. Anna Akhmatova, 1922
In 1922, two new portraits appeared, creating radically opposite images. Akhmatova Zinaida Serebryakova - touching, tender, unusually feminine. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin saw her completely differently; his portrait depicts a restrained and strict stoic, courageously enduring trials, a poet absorbed in what is happening inside. His Akhmatova is devoid of attractiveness and feminine charm; her face has more masculine features.
In 1927-1928 a series of graphic portraits of Akhmatova is written by the artist N. Tyrsa. These portraits are laconic, but very expressive. They are made in an unusual manner - soot from a kerosene lamp combined with watercolors. The artist created a subtle, strict, poetic, spiritualized and mournful image of the poet.
The 1964 portrait by the artist Langleben shows a woman exhausted by illness and adversity, but not broken, who survived the death of her husband, the arrest and imprisonment of her son, literary persecution and oblivion. Later, her talent was recognized all over the world, but recognition came to Modigliani only after her death.
Source - Culturology.Ru