Victor Borisov-Musatov’s works generally lack a developed subject. The master’s elegiac art is permeated with sorrowful reflections and notes of tranquillity. The artist deprives reality of concrete features, almost implying the existence of parallel worlds. In Self-Portrait with Sister, his sister is like the ghostly resident of an old, historical estate. The composition seems to have frozen in time, like a frame from a film reel, with the figures on the point of slipping away into the space beyond the clouds.

Borisov-Musatov Victor

Borisov-Musatov, Victor Elpidiforovich
1870, Saratov - 1905, Tarusa
Painter, draughtsman. Studied under Vasily Konovalov in Saratov (from 1886), under Vasily Polenov at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1890-91, 1893-95), under Pavel Chistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1891-93) and at the Academic Fernand Connon in Paris (1895-98). Member of the Moscow Fellowship of Artists (1899) and the Union of Russian Artists (1903). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1885). Contributed to the periodical exhibitions of the Moscow Society of Lovers of the Arts (1898) and the exhibitions of the Moscow Fellowship of Artists (1899-1905), Scarlet Rose (1904), Union of Russian Artists (1904-05), Salon des Independants (1905), Salon de la Nationale (1905), Salon d''Automne (1905) and the World of Art (1906).