Serge Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (1873–1943): Composer, pianist, conductor. Conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (1904–06). Emigrated (1917), settled in the United States (1918).
In February 1924, Konstantin Somov drew a pencil portrait of Serge Rachmaninoff. Although the artist was dissatisfied with the result, calling the image “a melancholy demon,” the composer’s family believed that he had captured Rachmaninoff’s soul. In May 1925, Steinway commissioned Somov to paint a large portrait of the composer for the Carnegie Hall in New York. This particular work is a modello, painted at the Château de Corbeville in Orsay, where the composer lived. The artist was also unhappy with this painting and only finished it a year later, when he added a landscape background.
