Nicolas Tarkhoff

M. Leclanché, Paris
Acquired at auction in Limoges by the present owner in June 1991

Possibly Paris, Salon des Indépendants, 1905, listed as Carnaval à Paris (première impresion)
Paris, Galerie Vollard, Exposition d'oeuvres de Nicolas Tarkhoff, 2- 16 May 1906, No.42

 

G.Diehl, N. Tarkhoff, entretien avec René Huyghe Membre de l'Académie française, Geneva: édition Somogy, 1982, listed p.25

Original canvas. There is some craquelure to the impasto and a layer of light surface dirt, otherwise in good overall condition. Held in a gilded plaster frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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The 'Moscow Parisian', as Tarkhoff was known, arrived in France at the age of 28 where he soon became a regular participant of the annual Salon des Indépendants. His first personal exhibition took place in St. Petersburg in 1905, but he made his name on the international stage in 1906, after his painting attracted the attention of the prominent Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organised the artist's personal exhibition in his gallery. Collectors of Tarkhoff's work included Schukhin, Diaghilev and Rothschild, yet the Russian public were slow to recognise him, prompting Sergei Makovsky's rebuke in 1910 after an exhibition at the editorial offices of Apollo: 'It is high time that we Russians understood that Tarkhoff is a great and original talent. It is time to bow down to his profoundly sincere and wonderful creativity'. In the 1907 Salon d'automne exhibition, the exuberance of his work led one reviewer to regard him as 'part of the younger Bohemian crowd who outrage even the Byzantines and our North American Indians with their brilliant colour' (quoted in E.Green, Nicolas Tarkhoff, Berry-Hill Galleries, 1989, p.7).

Paris carnivals were one of Tarkhoff's favourite themes for developing the precepts of Impressionism as defined by Edmond Duranty in his 1876 article La Nouvelle Peinture: 'Painters must try to capture the motion, the movement, the pushing and shoving of the passers-by in the same way as they must try to render the shaking of the leaves, the glistening of the water and the vibration of the sun-soaked air...' (Quoted in Nicholas Tarkhoff, Impressions of a Russian Painter in Paris, The Ahlen Art Museum and State Russian Museum, 1999, pp.65-6).