Self-portrait Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852)

Description of Karl Bryullov’s painting Self-Portrait

Karl Bryullov was undoubtedly a talented but very lonely artist, so even his illness he endured alone. For many seven months the fifty year old artist, on the advice of his doctors, did not leave his bed, no one was allowed to visit him, he was completely alone in his empty apartment.

And then, on a sunny day in May 1848, when everything had long since blossomed outside the window and a warm breeze was blowing, the disease finally receded. The first things the artist demanded from the doctor who came to check on him were an easel and paints, with which he began to draw with admirable speed a portrait, his own portrait, which he painted according to contemporaries in just two hours.

In this portrait the entire artist, all his power and talent, which for a long time was hidden in favor of a long illness, manifested itself in this very picture. The artist has depicted himself in a sitting position, right hand powerlessly leaning on a couch of red fabric. Red is not an accidental color here, as in addition to being the artist’s favorite color, in this painting it is intended to create a contrast between the weakened and aging artist and the bright colors of the life he loved so much.

The pale face, the strained eyelids, the thin, emaciated fingertips are all features of Brulov during this period. The black shirt also shows how much the man sitting in the chair, tired, tired to fight, tired to live, but stubbornly continues to strive to keep his talent, to give people a few more beautiful works. Sad, intelligent and all understanding eyes look from the portrait, as if bidding farewell to his audience and to all, passing in the past world.

This is how the artist saw himself, having lived in the world for half a century, and this is how the viewer sees him two centuries later. With this portrait he completes his life, which he compares with the candle, which burned out in 1952.