Serov, Valentin

Serov, Valentin (1865–1911). Russian painter and graphic artist, born in St Petersburg, son of the composer Alexander Serov. He studied privately under Repin and then in 1880–5 at the Academy in St Petersburg, where he became a friend of Vrubel. His work includes landscapes, genre pictures, and historical scenes, as well as book illustrations, but he is best known as a portraitist. In this field he was the greatest Russian painter of his time and a match for any artist in the world. Like Sargent, he was a cosmopolitan figure, used to moving in high society, and he brought to his work something of the same quality of aristocratic authority and poise associated with the American's portraits. Like Sargent, too, he painted with superb technical freedom and finesse, and it was only after his death that an exhibition of his work, including a large number of studies, showed the amount of labour he put into what seemed like the effortless expression of a natural gift. He was just as good with informal portraits as with grand showpieces. His two most famous paintings (both in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) are intimate early works, the breathtakingly beautiful Girl with Peaches (1887) and the almost equally lovely Girl in the Sunshine (1888); later, as his fame grew, he painted many of the leading Russian celebrities of his time, particularly artists, musicians, and writers. Serov was a member of the World of Art group and some of his later work shows a tendency towards flat Art Nouveau stylization. The most remarkable example is a nude, almost monochromatic portrait of the dancer Ida Rubinstein (Russian Museum, St Petersburg), painted in Paris in 1910 (at about the same time as Romaine Brooks's equally striking nude portrayal of this exotic beauty). Serov had a difficult personality (he could be gloomy and rude), but he was greatly admired for the integrity and sincerity of his work; he never let his skill lapse into mere virtuosity. From 1897 to 1909 he taught at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, where his pupils included Petrov-Vodkin.