Portrait of M. Ehrenburg 1924

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin painted this portrait of M. Ehrenburg sometime in the 1920s, and it looks like he used oils. The ochre palette gives the piece a kind of solemn atmosphere, but what really grabs me is the subtle modeling of the face. You can see these delicate touches around the eyes, nose and mouth, they really give the face a sense of presence and weight. I love the way Petrov-Vodkin used thin glazes of paint to build up the form, especially in the cheeks, and the way he left some areas more loosely defined, like the hair, it gives the face more prominence. In some ways it reminds me of those early modernist portraits by someone like Paula Modersohn-Becker, and just like that artist, it is in the quiet dignity that Petrov-Vodkin finds his own pictorial language. For me, this painting is a testament to the enduring power of portraiture.