Valentin Serov Portraits of Russia's Silver Age

Valentin Serov (1865-1911) burst onto the art scene at the age of twenty-two with his portrait Girl with Peaches. Returning from abroad, after firsthand exposure to Dutch, Italian, and Spanish masters, the young painter was determined to portray human beauty. In a short time Serov became the preeminent portraitist of Russia's Silver Age. Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier weds art criticism to social history in her study of Serov. She casts the artist's work against the Gilded Age of turn-of-the-century Russia, an era when money and consumption abounded and revolutionary change was taking place at all levels of society. Painting prominent people of the day in business, government, society, the nobility, and the arts, Serov created a gallery of Russia's important figures-figures seen with a sharp eye and painted with subtle irony. Respected for her studies of Ilya Repin and Russian realism, Valkenier brings well-deserved attention to an artist largely undiscovered in the West.Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl is the author of 'Valentin Serov Portraits of Russia's Silver Age', published 2001 under ISBN 9780810118263 and ISBN 0810118262.