Two interiors by Alexei Tyranov

View of the Hermitage Library, 1827.

Interior, circa 1830s.

I love these two very contrasting views.  The first is such a physically beautiful space, architecturally both grand and pristinely elegant.  But the light is so caressing, and the figures - who so clearly belong here - are charming.  Especially the young man in the right-hand foreground; is he hard at work, leaning over the paper at his hand?  Or does his pose tell us that he's thinking of other things, his gaze directed somewhere beyond that paper...?

The light's the thing in the second painting as well.  A cosy and fashionable, low-ceilinged room on an upper floor - you can see the snowy roofs of other buildings across the way - the white, wintery light playing off the various surfaces; the gilt picture frames, the brightly polished wooden furniture, the waxy glow of the floorboards, the flat ochre glaze of the walls.  All of it serves to focus our attention on the two men who are sitting - a potted plant on the sill between them - deep in conversation beside the double-paned window, poised between the cold exterior and the warm inside.

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Alexei Vasilievich Tyranov (1808, Bezhetsk – 3 August 1859), Russian painter, mainly known for his portraits and genre scenes.  Early in his career he painted icons with his brother, but was later accepted at the Academy in St. Petersburg, where he studied with Alexei Venetsianov.  From 1836 he was a pupil of Karl Bryullov.