Portrait of composer Dmitri Shostakovich (in adolescence) 1923

Boris Kustodiev drew this portrait of Dmitri Shostakovich as a young man, using delicate lines to capture the details of his face and form. The wispy strokes feel so vulnerable, right? Look at the way Kustodiev has worked the pencil to follow the planes of Shostakovich’s face. The strokes become lighter, darker, softer, harder, to build a presence, and suggest a certain pensiveness. You get the sense of Shostakovich as a young man, with his whole life ahead of him. I imagine Kustodiev trying to capture his essence on the page, asking himself, ‘Who is this young prodigy, and what will he become?’ The tenderness with which Kustodiev renders the young composer’s features feels akin to the feeling that comes from the music of other melancholic artists such as Erik Satie. It feels like a conversation across time, the artwork and music echoing one another’s sensitivity.