Why the personal life of a bohemian artist who was a favorite of women did not work out: Konstantin Korovin

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

Handsome, merry fellow, careless, generous to recklessness, loving life to self-forgetfulness, a darling of fate and a favorite of women - this is how those who knew well characterized the artist Konstantin Korovin … He personified the artistic bohemia of Russia in the pre-revolutionary era. All Moscow loved and revered him. But only the closest and trusted knew how unhappy the artist is in family life.

There were legends about the love and love of life of Konstantin Korovin, - Alexander Benois called him, and for good reason. The artist's creative life, in contrast to his family life, Korovin lived fruitful, bright and eventful; worked a lot, with enthusiasm, with amazing ease.

He was called the first Russian impressionist, his work shocked his contemporaries: some were shocked by the negligence and clumsy strokes, others saw the main thing - the innovation of the colorist. The first called the works of Konstantin Korovin "decadence and daubs", the second, discerned genius.

He painted striking portraits, landscapes, moods, amazing still lifes, was fond of monumental painting, applied art, architecture. And what was the cost of his theatrical scenery, which became innovative not only in Russian, but also in world art.

All happy families are equally happy, and unhappy families are each in its own way

Konstantin Korovin met his wife Anna Yakovlevna Fidler at a young age, when she was a chorus girl in the theater. Soon the 16-year-old girl became pregnant and gave birth to a son from Kostya, who died in infancy due to the fact that the house constantly lacked money for food, doctors, and medicine. The artist kept this relationship a secret even from his friends. Korovin got married with Anna only after the birth of his second son in 1897. Early marriage did not bring the artist either joy or happiness. And only affection for the child, but guilt for the death of the firstborn did not allow Constantine to leave his wife.

This marriage was very strange and sad. Konstantin Alekseevich lived as before, apart from his family, like a bachelor: in the winter in a workshop or in some inexpensive hotel, in the summer after the end of the theatrical season, in Okhotino. However, both before the wedding and after in public, they almost did not appear together. Korovin never wrote specifically a portrait of his wife (only in a few paintings can you find a slight resemblance to her facial features), he never mentioned her on the pages of his essays and stories, where there was a place for all people close to him.

In 1910, Korovin wrote: Inattention to his work so depressed the artist that he disgusted his wife. Therefore, he had good reasons to constantly run away from home. Moreover, the disorder in the uncomfortable apartment of the Korovins was so "unimaginable" that one had only to marvel at Anna Yakovlevna's slovenliness.

On the other hand, a bohemian artist for a family, whatever you say, is not a gift at all. And what could Constantine expect from a woman deprived of the joys of family life?

A ray of light in the artist's life

When almost 40-year-old Konstantin Alekseevich first met 17-year-old Nadya Komarovskaya, he was already a leading stage designer at the Bolshoi, and was considered a leading figure in the theatrical world. Therefore, it is not surprising that an aspiring actress, meeting a handsome artist behind the stage, was shy and lost the ability to speak.

The girl got into the art theater thanks to the art school that opened there, where she entered in 1902 in secret from her father, a lawyer from the provinces, who was sure that his bloodline was studying at the philological department of the Higher Courses for Women. Nadezhda did go there, but at the same time she studied acting, running between drama school and courses. After receiving her education, Komarovskaya worked for some time in the Kiev theater, and returning to Moscow in 1908, at one of the banquets she again met Korovin.

The artist, fascinated by the once matured young actress, immediately suggested: He gazed intently and cheerfully at the embarrassed Nadezhda, and she did not have the heart to refuse the famous master.

Nadya regularly went to pose in the painter's studio, and by the time the portrait was finished, seeing each other almost every day had become more than just a habit for both. And soon the girl completely fell in love with the painter to unconsciousness, only insidious jealousy did not give her rest. Well, what could be done here, to Korovin, who was already well over forty, women rushed like moths to a candle, wherever he appeared.

All students of the Moscow School of Painting, where Korovin taught, knew his main commandment:. Nadezhda also knew about her, but no matter how hard she tried, she did not manage to completely get rid of jealousy. And most of all, she was haunted by the thought of Korovin's legal wife - Anna Yakovlevna.

Nadezhda happened to see this woman several times. At that time, it was a stout brunette with regular, but too large facial features. There is no mind in the gaze, no interest in life. As then it seemed to the actress, she was more like a smug merchant's wife, in whose behavior something "old-fashioned merchant, strained, false" slipped through. Komarovskaya, like many, by the way, to realize that the ponderous Anna Yakovlevna is the legal wife of a charming, life-loving artist and the mother of his only son, was very difficult.

It remained a mystery to everyone why this particular woman, far from everything that worried the artist so much, how he lived, how he breathed, managed to take such a special place in his life. Even old friends of Konstantin Alekseevich could not give an intelligible answer to Nadya, who was tormented by conjectures. Korovin himself did not answer him, abruptly cutting off the questions of his beloved.

By nature, Korovin was so benevolent and harmless that it was ungrateful to take offense at him: at the most dramatic moment of the quarrel, he casually threw a joke, which against his will could make his opponent laugh to tears. What grudges are there? Nadezhda knew this well and did not take offense at her beloved.

In the early years of their romance, the lovers were inseparable. Korovin, meeting the actress after rehearsals, took her to taverns and restaurants, took her to the camp to familiar gypsies so that she could better imbued with the new role. He took her to Gurzuf to see the place chosen for the villa. - the artist told her, standing on the shores of the Black Sea, drowning in flowers, where he was going to build a nest, which both so passionately dreamed of.

And she sincerely began to believe that the ghost of Anna Yakovlevna would soon disappear from their lives. But not everything turned out as they both dreamed. Nadezhda Ivanovna and Konstantin Alekseevich never got a real family and home.

Broken hopes

In 1914, a fire broke out in a theater warehouse, which destroyed almost everything created by the artist over the years for the theater stage. Then the tragedy with his son Alexei, deliberately hit by a tram. In love with his childhood friend Ira Chaliapina, an 18-year-old boy proposed to the girl, to which she refused. And without hesitation for a long time, Alexey threw himself under the tram.

For several months, being between life and death, he underwent one operation after another: the disfigured feet practically had to be amputated. It was then that Nadezhda's dream of marriage with Korovin died completely. It was absolutely impossible to imagine that Korovin would ever be able to leave his unfortunate crippled son. So, sooner or later he had to leave her. It was only a matter of time. And she kept waiting, not daring to leave herself.

The parting happened by itself. The wind of a turbulent revolutionary time carried them further and further apart. In those years, Nadezhda Komarovskaya became a sought-after actress, the new post-revolutionary life called her for itself, and for Korovin, "the old stars were extinguished one after another." In 1920, dismissed from the Bolshoi Theater, with his wife and son left for the wilderness of the Tver province. Without a livelihood, the capital was too hungry.

In 1922, Korovin, exhausted in the struggle for survival, asked the new authorities for permission to go abroad in order to treat his wife, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and to make new prostheses for Lesha. And he left for Paris with the hope of a better life. It was on this city, which he depicted so many times in his paintings and where it was once so warmly received, that the artist pinned all his hopes. But the last sixteen years of his life spent in France turned out to be extremely difficult for him.

The paintings that the painter planned to ship in 1922 from Russia to Paris through an agent disappeared, the prostheses ordered for Lesha failed, housing was also tight, and Anna Yakovlevna fell ill completely. And the son from day to day, imperceptibly but irreversibly, became nervous, unbalanced and embittered, with a loser complex. It seemed that in that tragedy, he crippled not only his legs, but also his soul. Alexei's young wife, an emigrant ballerina Liza Dumarevskaya, taking her little son, left him, because of which Konstantin Alekseevich was very worried.

Korovin continued to paint, completed individual orders for theaters in Europe and America. But the money was sorely lacking. The lack of money oppressed the artist, who worked like a convict, tirelessly. And even when he began to go blind, he did not give up. Possessing an outstanding literary talent, he began to write stories. Never in his life, even in the most difficult times, who did not take on a loan, Konstantin Alekseevich now borrowed where he could. However, he kept the money sent by his friend Boris Krasin for a ticket back to Russia. But the artist was no longer destined to return there. He died unexpectedly: he died in September 1939 due to a heart attack on a Parisian street. The master was 77 years old.

The funeral of the first impressionist of Russia was reminiscent of the farewell to the last journey of a beggar: there were no people willing to give money for a worthy burial of Korovin. The ashes of Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin rest in the French cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. Here, Anna Yakovlevna and Alexei, who committed suicide during another depression in 1950, lie under the cross with him.

Unlike his teacher Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin, Konstantin Fedorovich Yuon lived with his wife in love and harmony for 60 years. Read also: Pictures of the artist who for 60 years loved one woman and one city.