Portrait de marin
Executed in 1971 and signed in the lower right corner, Portrait de marin (“Portrait of a Sailor”) is a figurative drawing by Antonin Ivanovitch Soungouroff — also known as Anatola — a Russian-born artist whose practice developed within the émigré artistic milieu of Western Europe. The composition centres on a young man of striking presence: his Breton-striped shirt anchors him to a maritime world, while the delicately indicated masts and rigging behind him situate the figure within a seafaring context. The subject meets the viewer with a direct and composed gaze — an expression of the quiet intensity that characterises Soungouroff’s approach to portraiture.
The work demonstrates the artist’s confident command of line as a primary expressive tool. The cream paper is left largely bare, the figure emerging through economical, assured strokes that achieve descriptive clarity without resorting to tonal elaboration. This approach aligns the drawing with a tradition of academic draughtsmanship that remained vital in mid-century European émigré art circles — a tradition committed to the primacy of the figure, rendered with observed precision and formal restraint. The sheet is signed and dated “71” in the lower right, placing it among Soungouroff’s later work.
Imago Dei Gallery presents this drawing as part of its collection of figurative works exploring the male subject across different media and periods. It represents a mode of seeing — intimate, unhurried, precise — that rewards sustained attention and speaks to a sustained engagement with the human form as both subject and vehicle of meaning.
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