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The Green Room

Lydia in a Doorway

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If you look around the room as you come in, on the first wall by the door is a picture that Leonid did of his flat in Moscow with a little figure in the doorway and a darker, larger figure behind it. And this is an absolutely beautiful little, very impressionistic sketch of his daughter, Lydia, my mother. And what's really lovely about it is that it's a distant image with a sunlight coming through a window, which has left the shadow of, of the crossbars against the wall. And there's a long foreground, which is very typical of Leonid. He has it in quite a lot of his pictures, and it's because I think he must have been long sighted. My mother used to describe to me how when he was painting a portrait, the sitter would be put in a chair and Leonid would set up his easel next to the sitter and then he would stand back and survey it and check on it, and then dart forward, add a dab or two of paint, and then retreat again to check it, whether it was right, and she said he would be saying to himself: 'Yes. Yes, that's right. That's the way it is. Yes.'

So you can see this great foreground here, and when I mentioned that Leonid, I think was long sighted, this is better illustrated by this lovely picture of Rosalia with the baby Boris that's hanging to the right of the fireplace in the second room. And you'll see that it's as though the focal length of the image is centred on the view beyond the open doorway to the right of the back of the picture. And there you can see in detail a little statuette on a table, near a window. And then you come your, sort of, your view moves forwards toward the picture. And in the foreground is Rosalia leaning over, um, looks like she's leaning over a newspaper and Boris in skirts sitting on a little chair and the picture is really, you know, very modernist in its technique. It's left great areas of canvas untouched, and it's broken up the paint in the foreground so that it's very pointelist, sort of blobs rather than proper transcriptions of legs and skirts. It's, it's a very powerful, very beautiful little, little gem.

So you can see this great foreground here. When I mentioned that Leonid, I think, was long sighted, this is better illustrated by a lovely picture of Rosalia with the baby Boris [2]. This hangs to the right of the fireplace in the second room. You'll see that it's as though the focal length of the image is centred on the view beyond the open doorway to the right of the back of the picture. And there you can see in detail a little equestrian statuette by a table [3], near a window. And then your view pulls forwards towards the picture’s foreground, where Rosalia is leaning over … looks like she's leaning over [her sewing] with Boris in skirts sitting on a little chair.

The picture is really very modernist in its technique. [Back to [2], full view]. It's left great areas of canvas untouched, and it's broken up the paint in the foreground so that it's [apparently out-of-focus] – it’s almost pointilliste, with sort of blobs rather than proper transcriptions of legs and skirts. It's a very powerful, very beautiful little gem.