The Russian School of Painting
Golovin is at his best in his stage settings. His decorations for the "Ice House," are admirable but especially beautiful, grandiose and poetic are his stage-settings for the "Women of Pskov." His sketches for Ibsens's "Lady from the Sea" are painted throughout in charming "northern" tones. Some of his stage-settings for "The Magic Mirror" and "Ruslan" are replete with that softness and musical throbbing that fills springtime evenings in old gardens and parks. In his inventions pertaining to theatrical costume he is a real virtuoso. He lavishes on his costumes all the splendour of his colourful fancy, invents fabulous fashions, and combines historical forms. But it can be said even about his best productions, that they are afflicted with annoying defects. Golovin is too dissolute; he is a typical representative of the Russian variety of the artistic Bohème. He will leave very little behind him: a few sketches, two or three paintings, several portraits. All this is distinguished by a genuinely artistic character, a splendour of colours, and a delicate taste, yet it is all nothing but hints and promises, which Golovin will hardly want to keep.
Golovin's stage settings are entirely different from those of Bakst. Golovin's work consists for the most part of improvised sketches, rash and superficial; Bakst's attitude toward his work is on the contrary, one
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