Costumes for the Imperial Ball and a Deck of Cards: The Most Famous Russian Illustrator of the 19th Century Sergei Solomko

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The works of Sergei Solomko are well known to everyone. The card deck "Russian style", where representatives of the Russian nobility are dressed in costumes according to his sketches, is still popular. However, little is known about the author of these drawings - and he even inspired the costume designers of the Star Wars universe …

Solomko's creative life was ambiguous. On the one hand, he worked hard, was popular and successful. On the other hand, he turned out to be practically "invisible" to art critics and was subjected to severe criticism … He was born into a wealthy and noble family, received an excellent education - he graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, then became a volunteer at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. When magazine periodicals began to develop in Russia, the question of illustrating magazines arose. At the same time, under the influence of the "World of Art", magazines began to turn to artists capable of creating original graphics, and not to engravers who rework other people's works of art. Along with Elizaveta Boehm, Sergei Solomko stood at the forefront of distinctive 19th century Russian illustrators.

Solomko began with magazine illustrations, but was not limited to it. In the 1880s, he collaborated with the magazines "Sever" and "Neva", was close to the magazine "World of Art", created a series of illustrations for the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol. In the wake of the revival of national identity, many artists created works with references to the historical past, at the same time reconstructing, reworking old Russian motives, reinventing the “Russian style”, which later, thanks to the export of products, world exhibitions and “Russian Seasons” by Diaghilev, won the love of Europeans … Solomko was one of the "applied" artists who worked in the neo-Russian style. He collaborated with the Imperial Porcelain Factory and drew postcards that were extremely popular.

Solomko both in Russia and abroad were known mainly from the images of charming girls and boys in Russian costumes of various eras, flirting with each other practically in the spirit of the "gallant century", and not pre-Petrine Russia. Lovely scenes in nature, near wells and wattle fences, among birches or in quiet streets, created an image of an idyllic past in which one would like to live. I must say that Solomko did not copy the costumes of his heroes from museum exhibits. He, relying on historical samples, developed a unique design for each image. Since the "glorious past" became fashionable, the capital's fashionistas fell in love with Solomko's works, borrowing subtle shades and elegant details of the beauties' costumes from his postcards for their outfits.

It was the costumes in the neo-Russian style that became the largest, most responsible and well-known order, which was carried out by Sergei Solomko. In 1903, he had the opportunity to create sketches for a costume ball in the Winter Palace - the most famous ball during the reign of the last Russian tsar. Thanks to the advent of photography, many pictures of this event have come down to us. Nicholas II saw in this masquerade a kind of an act of reviving the traditions of the pre-Petrine era, a return to the rites of the Moscow court, to the primordially Russian identity. Solomko managed to make the solemn, but bulky boyar costume elegant and light, because the guests had to dance in them all night. It is known that one of the costumes of Princess Padmé Amidala from the movie "Star Wars. Episode II: Attack of the Clones”is inspired by Solomko's works for the 1903 Winter Palace Ball. On the basis of Solomko's sketches, a deck of playing cards "Russian Style" was released, which ironically gained immense popularity in the USSR and was reissued with the same success in modern Russia.

In 1910 Solomko received a rich inheritance and … left Russia. He settled in Paris, where he continued to paint scenes from boyar life, which created certain ideas among Europeans about contemporary Russian life. During the First World War, Solomko created propaganda postcards, mainly of an anti-war nature, in which the image of Jesus Christ and Christian martyrs, for example, crucified Poland, was often present. After he was engaged in the creation of the Museum of the First World War. In addition, in France, Solomko returned to designing a costume, this time theatrical. He collaborated with Anna Pavlova and Matilda Kshesinskaya.

Both contemporaries and Soviet art critics evaluated Solomko's work in different ways, but a harshly negative attitude prevailed - “vulgar haberdashery taste”. The artist Igor Grabar called him "the general of the decadents" (referring, in particular, to his origin - Solomko's father was a general). Solomko was accused of indulging the tastes of the crowd, decadence, vulgarity. He, being, as they say, “in trend” in a global sense, did not correspond to the ideas of any artistic association. On the one hand, he followed the principles of “art for art's sake”, creating pure, unalloyed, unambiguous beauty without moralizing and social connotation, on the other hand, he worked as an artist of decorative and applied trends and painted works that were understandable and close to a wide range of people, without complex philosophical references and mysterious symbols. But, despite harsh criticism, Solomko is perhaps the most popularly loved illustrator of pre-revolutionary Russia - he still has many fans who are ready to give a lot of money at least for reprinting his postcards, and the Russian Style deck can be purchased in almost any gift shop.

Almost nothing is known about the personal life of Sergei Solomko. In 1927, he fell seriously ill, and the Society of Russian Artists in Paris held several charity evenings to support him. However, in 1928, the artist, who was in the Russian seniors' home, died and was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery.