Born in Saratov, Borisov-Musatov went to Moscow at the age of 20 and entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. However, he did not like it there and, a year later, moved to St. Petersburg to continue his studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts. It was then that he started adding Borisov to his last name, in honor of his grandfather, Boris Musatov.
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Victor Borisov-Musatov
Autumn Motif
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After graduating from the Academy, Borisov-Musatov traveled in Europe and studied painting in Paris. Financial difficulties made him return home, to Saratov; there he began to convey his personal impressions and emotions of the trip through painting. His knowledge of European art helped him to develop his own unique and recognizable manner of painting. That time is considered the most fruitful period of his artistic career.
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The Autumn Motif was painted in 1885. The artist depicts a young man sitting in front of a young girl in an autumn garden. The viewer can only try to guess what they are talking about. The young lady is wearing a white dress and looks very pensive. This female figure in a white robe, the so-called Musatov girl, his conception of Woman, is often encountered in the artist’s paintings and is recognized as his younger sister, Elena.
V. E. Borisov-Musatov, Spring (1899), the State Russian Museum.
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V. E. Borisov-Musatov, Self-Portrait with Sister (1898), the State Russian Museum.
The young man in a blue coat is depicted sitting in the foreground with his back to the viewer, his head down. Perhaps he is telling the girl that he loves her, and they both feel uneasy. According to art historians, their appearance and clothing suggest that the young people come from different epochs: the young man belongs to the 18th century, while the girl inhabits the middle of the 19th century.
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Borisov-Musatov liked to paint the disappearing world of the old gentry estates, the so-called nests of the gentry – it was his main theme – while the image of a young lady in white, the Musatov lady, was his ideal of beauty and a symbol of the vanishing old gentry. The artist masterfully conveys the feeling of luminous’ or gracious sadness and nostalgic view of the past glory of the disappearing epoch and of the time that cannot be reversed.
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Borisov-Musatov painted in the Impressionist manner. He studied it in France. He uses short, thick strokes of paint to capture the essence of the subjects rather than their details with an uneven canvas surface.
The dominant colors of the painting are white, blue and green. To give the leaves their beautiful autumn shades, the artist uses various hues of red, orange and pink. The scene is set in a garden gazebo with sunlight passing through thick foliage which is still green.
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A.N. Radishchev State Art Museum, Saratov
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Autumn Motif
Creation period
1899
Dimensions
143x98,5 cm
Technique
oil on canvas
Collection
6
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