Somov, Andrei

Somov, Andrei Ivanovich

 

Born May 15 (27), 1830, in St. Petersburg; died there May 30 (June 12), 1909. Russian art critic and museum curator. Father of K. A. Somov.

Somov became an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1871. He was editor of Vestnik iziashchnykhiskusstv (Journal of the Fine Arts) and became senior curator of the Hermitage in 1886. He was a founding member of the Society of Russian Aquafortists. Somov compiled catalogs of the collections of the picture galleries of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (vols. 1–3, 1872–86) and the Hermitage (vols. 1–3, 1889–1908), which are valuable for their factual information. He also wrote works on K. P. Briullov (1876) and P. A. Fedotov (1878) and articles on art criticism.