"Unknown" - a portrait by Alexei Tyranov, circa 1840s

 

I'm always amazed - and, honestly, saddened - that so many wonderful portraits have come down to us only identified as "unknown." Often paintings by celebrated artists who were greatly admired in their own times as well as ours. One would think the pertinent information related to such works would be passed down. Or that the families of the portraits' subjects would make certain that their loved ones were remembered, identification affixed in some manner to the paintings, so their names would not be lost.

This charming, raven-haired young lady, elegant in black velvet and lace, is one who is lost. The upheaval of the Russian Revolution, at least, may explain her displacement and her lack of identity. I often do a surprising amount of research putting together posts here, probably much more than I need to. But it's something that excites my pedantic little brain; it's something I enjoy very much. And so when I come across a portrait I find particularly compelling, one that is merely labeled "unknown", I always wish there was a way for me to do the necessary research - not for blog posts, but for museum collections and the like, as a paying job, even? - and find that name, that history. I think I'd be quite happy to spend the rest of my days immersed in just that sort of endeavor. 

Three portraits of boys by/of Tyranov

Boy at a Table.

Sleeping Boy, 1824.  This attribution of this painting is confusing; it is either of artist Nikifor Krylov, or possibly by him and a portrait of Tyranov.

Self-portrait, 1825.  The artist was seventeen in the year he painted this.

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.

***

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.