Konstantin Andrejevitš Somov

Somov kept a little notebook in his pocket, sketching strangers in St. Petersburg’s most crowded cafés just to see how their faces changed when they laughed. He loved masks, powdered wigs, and half-hidden smiles, yet his own letters to lovers were so blunt they shocked the post office. Blink and you might miss the joke in his drawings: a girl in a garden who’s really a boy, or a rainbow that only appears if you tilt the page. Look up Sateenkaari and hold it sideways; the real surprise is in the sideways light.