Portrait of Igor Stravinsky
Maker
Title
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky
Accession Number
G.2023.XX.5
Mode of Acquisition
2023
Credit
The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)
Copyright
© The Estate of Milein Cosman
Location
Not currently on display
Label Text
Born into a Jewish family in Germany and educated in Britain during the Second World War, Milein Cosman (1921-2017) is best known for her drawings and prints depicting musicians and dancers. Her graphic oeuvre is distinguished by its energy and spontaneity as well as a tireless devotion to capturing movement. Early employment as an illustrator for the Radio Times set her on a path she would pursue for the rest of her career: chronicling London’s vibrant cultural life. As a woman artist who specialised in figurative drawing when abstraction was in vogue, Cosman’s work fell outside the artistic mainstream during her lifetime. It has become better known since her death, thanks to the bequest of much of her work to the trust established by the artist and her late husband, Hans Keller, as well as a major gift to the Royal College of Music, which now holds the largest public collection of her work in the UK.
When Cosman found a subject that fascinated her, she tended to return to it over the course of years or even decades; the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), the subject of the three prints now in The Courtauld's collection, is an important case in point. Cosman first encountered Stravinsky at the premier of his opera The Rake’s Progress in Venice in 1951 and, despite initially refusing an offer to sketch him, she soon succumbed to the urge to draw him. She would later draw him on his visits to London in 1958, 1959 and 1961. None of her drawings or prints of Stravinsky are traditional portraits; apart from a single session in Venice, he never sat to her again and, according to her biographer Ines Schlenker, all of her subsequent depictions of him were taken on the fly, whilst he was in the midst of rehearsing or performing. This print would have been made away from the subject, but it exemplifies the spontaneity of Cosman’s draughtsmanship as well as capturing Stravinsky in a distinctive mood. This black-and-white aquatint transforms Stravinsky into an almost Goyesque imp, compelling and sinister in equal measure.
When Cosman found a subject that fascinated her, she tended to return to it over the course of years or even decades; the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), the subject of the three prints now in The Courtauld's collection, is an important case in point. Cosman first encountered Stravinsky at the premier of his opera The Rake’s Progress in Venice in 1951 and, despite initially refusing an offer to sketch him, she soon succumbed to the urge to draw him. She would later draw him on his visits to London in 1958, 1959 and 1961. None of her drawings or prints of Stravinsky are traditional portraits; apart from a single session in Venice, he never sat to her again and, according to her biographer Ines Schlenker, all of her subsequent depictions of him were taken on the fly, whilst he was in the midst of rehearsing or performing. This print would have been made away from the subject, but it exemplifies the spontaneity of Cosman’s draughtsmanship as well as capturing Stravinsky in a distinctive mood. This black-and-white aquatint transforms Stravinsky into an almost Goyesque imp, compelling and sinister in equal measure.
Provenance
Bequeathed by the artist to the Cosman Keller Art & Music Trust, 2017; gifted by the Cosman Keller Art & Music Trust, 2023
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