A reclining man

A Reclining Man, dated 1936, belongs to the intimate figure studies that Somov pursued alongside his formal portraits during his Parisian émigré years. Works depicting a reclining male figure fit within the personal vein of his practice — the private album subjects that he shared only with trusted friends — rather than the commissioned portraits or decorative cabinet pieces he produced for public sale. By 1936 Somov was in his early seventies, his international reputation from the World of Art period still intact among Russian émigré collectors though his work was less known to younger French audiences. A reclining figure subject gave him scope for unhurried observation of the human form in repose, a subject that combined his academic figure-drawing discipline with the personal emotional interest in the male figure that runs through his private work. The canvas belongs to the intimate final phase of a career that began in the aristocratic cultural world of late Imperial St. Petersburg.

The reclining pose presents a horizontal compositional structure unusual in Somov's predominantly vertical or three-quarter portrait format. Anatomical observation of a relaxed figure requires different skills from an upright pose — weight distribution, the collapse of musculature into repose — and this canvas would demonstrate his sustained ability to observe the body at rest.