25 june 2006 - 20 august 2006
Drawings of Nicolas Tarkhoff

Nicolas Tarkhoff (1871, Moscow -- 1930, Orsay) was a Russian-born Impressionist. He was known as the “Moscow Parisian,” because he spent so much of his life in France -- from 1898 until his death in 1930. A member of the World of Art and the Union of Russian Artists, Tarkhoff began drawing at the age of twenty-four. After an unsuccessful attempt to enrol at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he studied under Konstantin Korovin. At the age of twenty-eight, Tarkhoff made his first visit to Paris, where he studied drawing and began actively working and exhibiting. In 1906, he held a one-man show at the gallery of Ambroise Vollard, the famous Parisian art dealer who championed all the leading French Impressionists. Sergei Makovsky, Alexander Benois and Kazimir Malevich all wrote about Tarkhoff’s oeuvre. In his lifetime, his works were acquired by such famous connoisseurs of art as Schukin, Troyanovsky, Zeitlin, Diaghilev and Rothschild and artists like André Derain and André Lhote.

The posthumous fate of Nicolas Tarkhoff was less illustrious. For many years, his name was excluded from the history of Russian art. The words of Sergei Makovsky, written in 1910 following an exhibition of the artist’s works at the editorial offices of Apollo, still remain relevant today: “Tarkhoff is still little known and poorly appraised in Russia. 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 veritable, sincere and wonderful creativity.”

In 2003, the Tretyakov Gallery opened Russia’s first major retrospective of Nicolas Tarkhoff. Held in collaboration with the Nashi Khudozhniki Gallery, Independent Republic of Painting showed around a hundred works by the master, covering his entire career in art. For the first time, Russians could see Tarkhoff’s paintings from the famous exhibition of Russian art in Paris in 1906, which paved the way for the launch of Sergei Diaghilev’s Saisons Russes.

“Tarkhoff hovers on the verge of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, retaining his own lyrical intonation and individuality in the variable game of different movements” (Vasily Rakitin).

The Nashi Khudozhniki Gallery now shows over one hundred drawings by Nicolas Tarkhoff. This unique exhibition is the first time that the master’s graphic heritage has been shown on such a broad scale. The show does not include colour gouaches or watercolours. The exhibition is deliberately composed of monochrome works, in order to show the remarkable possibilities of the artist’s brilliant command of space, line and the tonal stroke.

For an objective appraisal of an artist’s mastery and professionalism, the most accurate indicator of the quality of his oeuvre is his draughtsmanship. Tarkhoff’s hundreds of first-class gouaches, sanguine, charcoal and graphite pencil drawings clearly reflect his serious and thoughtful approach to art.

The subjects of Nicolas Tarkhoff’s drawings are simple and unpretentious. Constantly repeating them, the artist brilliantly varies the technical execution, virtuously experimenting with line and tone and enriching the possible uses of the one colour. With their characteristic alternations of lines and strokes, Tarkhoff’s sanguine and charcoal works are traditionally European, dating back to the early graphic art of the Impressionists. Avoiding all hints of self-admiration or complaisance, the artist immerses us in an atmosphere of kindness, harmony and tranquillity, inviting us to share the delights of a simple way of life.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.