Portrait of a Hungarian artist József Ripley Ronai 1912

Konstantin Korovin painted this portrait of József Ripley Ronai, a fellow artist, with oils sometime around 1929. The brushwork here is all bravura and dash, like someone threw a bunch of pigment at the canvas and then posed a person in front of it! I'm kidding, of course, but there’s a truth to it: the raw energy in Korovin’s approach is what makes it sing. Look closely, and you'll see how the textures of Korovin's strokes are anything but accidental. Check out the the confident flicks of dark paint around the lower torso, giving structure to a figure which would otherwise be lost. The way he builds up the surface with layers of opaque colour, hinting at form and shape but never quite resolving it. The speed of the brushwork and the casual elegance of the composition remind me of Manet, or maybe Sargent. But Korovin brings his own sensibility. The art world’s a conversation, right?