Self-portrait with a pearl shell

"Self-portrait with a pearl shell." - One of Vrubel's late works, painted a year before the artist went completely blind from his illness and was unable to continue painting. At the time of its creation, he was already in his third year of treatment for attacks of mental disorder, this time in a Moscow clinic founded by psychiatrist Fyodor Usoltsev.

Glimpses of life
Dr. Usoltsev created a sanatorium, which was strikingly different from similar institutions of the time. Together with his wife he purchased a country cottage with an orchard in Petrovsky Park and in 1903 rebuilt two wings into a sanatorium for the mentally ill and alcoholics. His idea was to create conditions that would not resemble those of a hospital. Patients would attend concerts and creative evenings in the living room of the house where the doctor lived with his family, and during the day would go for walks or pursue their hobbies.

Usoltsev was one of the first domestic psychiatrists who paid attention to the creativity of the mentally ill, and encouraged this occupation in every possible way. He communicated closely with many representatives of the creative intelligentsia and was friends with Benois, Polenov, Vasnetsov and Lanceret. His methods had a positive effect on Vrubel's condition: after just a month of treatment at the clinic in the summer of 1904, he felt considerably better and even returned to normal life. One of the drawings at that time he wrote: "To dear and esteemed Fyodor Arsenievich from the resurrected Vrubel".

Unfortunately, six months later the illness reasserted itself with hallucinations and psychosis, and the artist had to return to the hospital. This time for a longer period, almost a year. While in the hospital he became interested in experimenting with the representation of colour and texture, using only shades of black. He painted portraits of doctors and nursing staff, sketches of individual objects and scenes, trying to catch the glare, the iridescence of shades and volume. "Form is the most important content of plastics, Vrubel asserted. - I am sure that future artists will abandon paint altogether, will only draw with Italian pencil and charcoal, and the public will eventually learn to see paint in these drawings as I see them now."

Copper pipes
Ironically, the more rapidly Vrubel's mental disorder progressed, the more recognition of his work grew. If ten years before this his works were too figurative and revolutionary for the general public and the majority of art critics, then already in 1903 a double issue of Mir Iskusstva was completely devoted to Vrubel. Critics who had previously spoken out against his progressive artistic methods, openly admitted their limitations and shortsightedness.

In November 1905, "for his fame in the artistic field" he was awarded the title of Academician of painting. As part of the "Golden Fleece" magazine's project to create portraits of leading contemporary writers by the best artists, publisher Nikolai Ryabushinsky visited Vrubel in the hospital. He commissioned him to paint a portrait of Valery Bryusov - one of the fathers of Russian Symbolism.

The writer described his meeting with the artist: "To tell the truth, I was horrified to see Vrubel. It was a frail, sickly man, in a dirty wrinkled shirt. His face was reddish, his eyes were like those of a bird of prey and his hair was sticking out instead of a beard. The first impression: madman! <...> In life, in all movements Vrubel was clearly visible disorder. But as soon as the hand Vrubel took a coal or a pencil, it acquired extraordinary confidence and firmness. The lines drawn by him were unmistakable ... The creative force has gone through it all. The man was dying, destroyed, the master - continued to live".

As Briusov later noted, he regretted that he had not guessed to take a photograph from the original sketch made at the first session. He believed that "on the strength of performance, the expression of the face, the similarity" of this drawing was barely better later version...colored with colored pencils.

A mother-of-pearl obsession
"Self-Portrait with Pearl Shell" is a wonderful illustration of Vrubel's creative quest of the hospital period. Using the difference in texture and density of the paint layer, which gives watercolor, gouache, charcoal, sanguine and pastel, he managed to bring to life the idea of "black and white colorfulness". Looking at the picture, you do not notice that it is deprived of the usual shades and colors. The illusion created by the artist makes the brain build up the missing colors, and when we recollect this work, the familiar full-color picture appears before our eyes.

Vrubel achieved the effect of luminescence that he had so long sought in his numerous charcoal sketches when he was given a huge mother-of-pearl shell as an ashtray (by the way, it has survived and is kept in the Russian Museum). He studied the structure of the pearl layer in order to understand how to convey its shades from darker to lighter colours. In his self-portrait, he placed the shimmering sash at his right hand, making it disproportionately large. Behind him, a porcelain figure of a swan flickers in the sun, like a memory of a beautiful princess with of another famous painting.

Vrubel managed to achieve an almost holographic volume when depicting his face. The self-portrait, which captures the results of his latest research, became in some ways the artist's creative testament. Unfortunately, just one year later he completely lost his vision and the opportunity to continue his experiments with the search for the means of monochrome expressiveness.

Author: Natalia Azarenko