Pushkin - A gallery of portraits [antikvár]

Pushkin's oeuvre, his personality and character have always attracted and inspired poets and artists, composers and performers. Ali of them strove to interpret Pushkin's image and bring out the underlying motifs of his creative work in their own way, focussing on the features close to their own personality and period. It was fine art that paid the greatest tribute to Pushkin by way of portraits, scenes from his life, monuments, book illustrations and large prints, stage and costume designs. The purpose of the present album is to give a chronologically arranged review of the iconography of Pushkin in drawing, painting and sculpture - from the first portrait made during his lifetime, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to the works produced in the 1970s; to analyse works of different nature, style and period; to reveal the main trends in the evolution of Pushkin's image in the course of more than 150 years; to bring out the stylistic features of each period of the Pushkin iconography and to reveal how the succeeding generations searched for, and discovered, "their own" Pushkin. Approximately twenty Pushkin portraits done during his lifetime have come down to us. These include portraits executed by order of Pushkin or his friends in oil, water-colour and pencil as well as genre drawings and engraved portraits in editions of Pushkin's works. Among those who were priviledged to see the poet and draw his likeness were such famous painters as Kiprensky, Tropinin and Chernetsov, the draughtsmen Alexander Briullov, Grigory Gagarin and Piotr Sokolov, the engravers Geitman and Utkin, and alsó somé amateurs and obscure artists who are known today only for their portraits of Pushkin. The two earliest portraits represent Pushkin as a child and as a youth. They have only "photographic" value and are not significant works of art. Ali the subsequent portraits aspire to give somé insight into the poet's creative personality. Thus, in 1822 the wish to introduce the newly emerged poet to the public prompted the appearance of