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The Artwork of Dmitri Bouchène

Born in St. Tropez, France at the Villa of General Allard in April of 1893, Dmitri Dmitriévitch Bouchène was a Russian painter and theatrical costume and set designer who worked in both the Russian Federation and France. In 1947, he became a naturalized citizen of France where he remained for the rest of his life.

Dmitri Bouchène was a descendant of a French Huguenot family. His great-grandfather had relocated from France to Catherine the Great’s Russia in 1685 due to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes which effectively expelled the Huguenots from France. After the death of his mother in 1895, Bouchène was raised by his aunts in St. Petersburg. He attended the Second Imperial Gymnasium and evening classes at the art school established by the Society for Encouragement and Promotion of Arts. It was at the Imperial Gymnasium that Bouchène met fellow student Sergey Rostislavovich Ernst, with whom he would remain a loving partner for the rest of his life.

Through a personal recommendation from Russian painter Nicolas Roerich to French painter Maurice Denis who was teaching at the Académie Ranson in Paris, Bouchène was able to attend the academy and study at Denis’s workshop. There he met and received lessons on intuitive painting from Henri Matisse. After returning to St. Petersburg in 1913, Bouchène resumed his studies in history and philology, the study of language in oral and written historical sources. From 1915 to 1917, he continued his drawing studies at the Society for the Promotion of Arts.

Dmitri Bouchène, through the sponsorship of painter and theatrical designer Alexandre Benois, became part of the staff at the Hermitage Museum where he curated the department of porcelain, silver and jewels until 1925. A member of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) group since 1917, Bouchène was invited by Benois, under appointment by art critic Sergei Diaghilev, to participate in the group’s exhibitions at St. Petersburg’s Anichkov Palace. Bouchène entered paintings in the Mir Iskusatva exhibitions of 1918, 1922, and 1924.

Bouchène’s style of painting incorporated the motifs and methods of Catalan modernist painter Antoni Gaudí and Venetian painter Giovanni Canal. He executed easel paintings of still lifes and landscapes as well as set and scene designs for the theater. Bouchène also created graphic work for publishers, including bookplates for Akvilon Publishing in Petrograd. He participated in Russian landscape exhibitions, the 1922 First State Independent Art Exhibition at Berlin’s Galerie van Diemen, bookplate art exhibitions in Petrograd and Kazan, and the 1924 Russian Art Exhibition held at New York.

In 1925, Dmitri Bouchène asked for a leave of absence from the Hermitage Museum to travel with Sergey Ernst to Paris for a three month study program of art history. Permission was granted and they left Russia by way of the Estonian city of Tallinn, never to return. While exploring Paris, Ernst purchased a Delacroix painting he found at a low cost in a Parisian flea market; the resale of this work enabled them to buy a home. In 1926, Bouchène began his career in France with costume designs for prima ballerina Ann Pavlova.

In 1930 following this success, Bouchène began work as a costume and set designer for the Paris Opéra and Teatro alla Scala. He also created interior decor for Paris-based Maison Jansen and haute couture work for such fashion designers as Lucien Lelong and Nina Ricci. During the Second World War, both Bouchène and Ernst took an active part in the French Resistance. Bouchène continued his painting and design work after the war; Ernst established himself as an art critic and historian with three published monographs on noted Russian Silver Age artists: Zinaida Serebriakova, Alexandre Benois and Nicolas Roerich.

Dmitri Bouchène was deeply affected by the 1980 death of his longtime partner Sergey Ernst. He had considered Ernst and theatrical designer Alexandrer Benois as the two pillars that supported his life. Ernst was interred in a tomb located in the thirteenth division of the Montparnesse Cemetery in Paris. Bouchène died, thirteen years later, in February of 1993 at the age of ninety-nine. He was buried in the Montparnesse tomb alongside Sergey Ernst. Their tomb was inscribed with the words “What a Joy / You have Arrived” in honor of their long lives together.

In 1947, Bouchène’s friend, the art collector Frederik Johannes Lugt, established the Fondation Custodia at the eighteenth-century Hotel Turgot in Paris; this foundation is the custodian of Bouchène’s archives. Numerous private collection hold Bouchène’s paintings and graphic works.

The Dmitri Bouchène website, established by Pascal Davy-Bouchène, is located at: https://dimitri-bouchene.com

Tope Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Dmitri Bouchène in His Studio”, 1960, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Dmitri Bouchène, Costume Design for Claudio Monteverdi’s Opera “l’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppaea)“, 1953, Charcoal and Gouache on Paper, 33 x 23.5 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Dmitri Bouchène, “Flowers Against the Blue Background”, Gouache on Paper on Canvas, 105 x 76 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Dmitri Bouchène, Costume Design for Leoš Janáček’s 1954 Opera “Z Mrtvého Domu (House of the Dead)”, Charcoal and Gouache on Paper, 32 x 24 cm, Private Collection

Konstantin Somov, “The Boxer”, Portrait of Mikhailovich Snejkovsky, 1933, Oil on Canvas, 54.8 x 46 cm, Private Collection

Born in Saint Petersburg in November of 1869, Konstantin Andreyevich Somov was a Russian artist and founding member of the artistic movement Mir Iskusstva, World of Art, that became a major influence on Russian artists of the early twentieth-century. Konstantin Somov was the second son of Andrei Somov, an art historian and senior curator at the Hermitage Museum, and Nadezhda Konstantinovna, a talented musician and well-educated daughter of the Lobanovs nobility.

Konstantin Somov attended the Karl May School in Saint Petersburg where he became close friends with classmates Dmitry Filosofov, later author and literary critic, and Alexandre Benois, future historian and influential designer for the Ballets Russes. At the age of twenty, Somov entered the Imperial Academy of Arts and studied from 1888 to 1897 under Ukrainian-born historical and portrait painter Ilya Repin. While at the academy, he developed lasting friendships with Sergei Diaghilev, the future founder of the Ballets Russes, and Léon Bakst, a painter who became an influential costume designer for Diaghilev’s company.

In the summer of 1895, Somov and Alexandre Benois stayed at a dacha in the village of Martyshkino near the coastal city of Oranienbaum. The landscapes he created and exhibited became his first major success with praise from both critics and artists. Somov graduated from the Academy in 1897 and continued his education at the Académie Colarossiin Paris. From 1897 to 1890, he worked on a portrait of Elizaveta Martynova, clothed in an old-fashioned dress, entitled “Lady in Blue”. Martynova was a painter, a graduate of the Imperial College of the Arts, who died at the age of thirty-six from tuberculosis. In this portrait finished four years before her death, Martynova’s delicate and trembling figure, frail with yellowish skin, stands alone in a park facing spectators with a face full of sorrow.

After the founding of the Mir Iskusstva in 1898, Konstantin Somov served as an editorial board member and contributed illustrations and designs to its magazine edited by Sergei Dlaghilev. During the 1910s, he created a series of harlequin scenes and illustrations for a poetry volume by Alexander Blok. Somov’s work was now exhibited in the United States and Europe, particularly in Germany where a 1909 monograph on his work was published.

In 1910 at the age of forty, Somov met the eighteen-year old Methodiy Lukyanov who became his close longtime companion and part of the Somov family. Lukyanov helped in the household, organized exhibitions and became Somov’s trusted advisor and critic. Somov painted many portraits of Lukyanov, among which is a large 1918 portrait which depicted Lukyanov seated on a sofa in pajamas and robe; this work is now housed in St. Petersburg’s Russian Museum. Somov and Lukyanov’s relationship would continue for twenty-two years until Lukyanov’s death from tuberculosis in April of 1932.

Konstantin Somov had a penchant for drama and was drawn to the elegant but bawdy nature of French erotic writing of the 18th century. From 1907 to 1919, he worked on illustrations, some suggestive and others explicit, for “Le Livre de la Marquise”, an anthology of eighteenth-century erotic French poetry and prose by Lachos, Casanova and Voltaire. Somov’s work became more erotic as time progressed. The most explicit of these was an eight-hundred copy edition published in 1917 at St. Petersburg’s R. Golike & A. Vilborg & Company.

Although initially greeted with enthusiasm, the Russian Revolution from 1917 to 1923 created a deterioration in living conditions. Shortly after the government nationalized his apartment, Somov was evicted; he did however manage to retain the rights to his own artwork. In December of 1923, Somov became part of the Russian Exhibiton and, as a member of the delagation, traveled to the United States where he represented the city of Petrograd. He never returned to to his homeland. After leaving the United States in 1925, Somov settled in Paris where he reunited with his old friends Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst and Benois’ niece, the painter Zinaida Serebryakova.

Konstantin Somov, in terms of his artistic influences, felt closer to the Old Masters rather than the work of his contemporaries. He was particularly drawn to the work of eighteenth-century Rococo painter François Boucher known for his idyllic pastoral scenes. While in Paris, Somov predominantly painted miniatures and portraits. The still life became one of his favorite subjects and would perform an important role in his portraits as it added additional information on the sitter.

Even though established as a well-known artist, Somov continued to live a reclusive lifestyle. In June of 1930, he met Boris Mikhailovich Snejkovsky. Born in Odessa in July of 1910, Snejkovsky was the son of a captain of the Russian Volunteer Fleet and traveled frequently with his family until they settled in Paris. During the 1930s, Snezhkovsky would model, both clothed and nude, for many of Somov’s works including illustrations for an edition of “Daphnis and Chloe”. In February of 1923, Somov painted a portrait of his model entitled “The Boxer”, a half-length nude oil-portrait with boxing gloves on the wall. Snezhkovsky also served as the model for Somov’s 1937 “Obnazhennyl Iunosha (Nude Youth)” now in the State Russian Museum.

Konstantin Andreyevich Somov died in May of 1939, at the age of sixty-nine, in Paris, France. He is buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, south of Paris. In 2016, Russian art historian Pavel Golubev founded the Somov Society to preserve and study the life and works of Konstantin Somov. Goluvev curated the 2019 “Konstantin Somov, Uncensored” at Ukraine’s Odessa Fine Arts Museum and sponsored the 2019 colloquium “The Lady with the Mask: Homosexuality in the Art of Konstantin Somov” at the University of Pennsylvania.

Top Insert Image: Konstantin Somov, “Self Portrait”, 1921, Pencil Watercolor on Paper, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Konstantin Somov, “Vladimir Aleksandrovich Somov”, Konstantin Somov’s Nephew, 1925, Oil on Canvas

Third Insert Image: Konstantin Somov, “Lady in Blue”, Portrait of Yelizaveta Martynova, 1897-1900, Oil on Canvas, 103 x 103 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Fourth Insert Image: Konstantin Somov, “Boris Snejkovsky with Cigarette”, 1938, Oil on Canvas, 46.4 x 38 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Konstantin Somov, “Daphnis and Chloe”, 1930, Watercolor Illustration, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom