The Sculptor, 1964

The Sculptor, 1964. By the American realist painter John Koch (1909-1978). When the model quite literally gives off fire: having taken the measurements of his nude sitter, the master has nothing left to do but light a cigarette with shaking hands, never letting go of the callipers.

I simply adore Koch's work. Every one of his portraits captures a dialogue, movement, an interplay between its characters, and some charming fragment of the everyday that is hard to find, easy to miss and impossible to forget.

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Drawing in brown tones of a young woman's bowed head, with downcast eyes and loose, wavy hair.

Leonardo da Vinci, “La Scapigliata”, Head of a Young Woman, around 1508

Head of a young woman, known as La Scapigliata. Leonardo da Vinci. Circa 1508. The work embodies the chief principle of the master's poetics: the conveyance of the movements of the soul through outward features. This sketch demonstrates the summit of Leonardo's sfumato technique

Old studio photograph of a bearded man in a turban and striped robe, with a dagger and a long spear, a white cat sitting at his feet.

A Kurdish warrior with a spear and a white cat in a photograph of 1870

I have been seized by an unbounded respect for this Kurdish warrior with his cat, in a photograph of 1870

Church of St Sergius of Radonezh in Tashkent, consecrated in 1897 and demolished in 1932

Until 1932 Tashkent had a church of Saint Sergius of Radonezh. It was built at the state's expense on the initiative of the Governor-General of Turkestan, Baron Alexandr Vrevsky, and the construction cost 90,000 roubles. The church stood on Pushkinskaya Street, at the junction with Assakinskaya.

Old photograph of a standing man in a hat beside a reindeer carrying two children in fur clothing, on snowy ground.

Family portrait with reindeer, photograph from the 1910s

Portrait of a family with reindeer, 1910s

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Leonardo da Vinci, “La Scapigliata”, Head of a Young Woman, around 1508

A Kurdish warrior with a spear and a white cat in a photograph of 1870

Church of St Sergius of Radonezh in Tashkent, consecrated in 1897 and demolished in 1932

Family portrait with reindeer, photograph from the 1910s