Russian Portraits

Russian Portraits

In defence I can only say that this was not written for publication. I have always kept a diary, in monotonous as in eventful days. In publishing a record of my stay in Moscow I am submitting to pressure without which I would not venture upon such a line. Mine is not the business of writing, nor are politics my concern: I went to Moscow where some portrait work was offered me. There are people in England who are indignant at my doing Lenin and Trotsky. There were people in Moscow who were horrified because I had done Churchill, and expressed a desire to do dAnnunzio, but as a portraitist I have nothing to do with politics; it is humanity that interests me, humanity with its force and its weakness, its ambitions and fears, its honesty and lack of scruples, its perfection and deformities. He took me in a taxi to Bond Street to the office of Messrs. Kameneff and Krassin. We waited for about twenty minutes in an anti-chamber, and I had a certain melodramatic feeling. Here was I, at all events, in the outer den of these wild beasts who have been represented as ready to spring upon us and devour us! This movement that has caused consternation to the world, and these people so utterly removed from my environment, these myths of what seemed almost a great legend, I was now quite close to. Meanwhile the clerks in the office occupied my attention, they interested me as types, and I wondered about them, about exactly what in their lives had made them into Bolsheviks, and what sort of mentality it was, and whether the scheme which they upheld was a workable concern. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 58009
Author: Sheridan, Clare
Release Date: Oct 2, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English