CHMAROFF, PAVEL (1874-1950)

**PRICE ON APPLICATION**
 
"Plyzah (Beach)" (c.1920)
oil on board
42 x 82cm
signed lower left
*private collection, Lotz, Poland
*confiscated by the Nazis, returned 18.01.47
*private collection, Sydney
 
Pavel Chmarov (or Павел Шмаров) was a famous, award-winning Russian Impressionist, known as the 'Renoir Of Russia'. He was born in Voronezh to a poor peasant family in 1874. In 1893, he went to study at a free art school run by  L. G. Solovyov, where drawing and open air sketches were emphasised. The following year he was admitted for graduate studies at the Imperial Academy of Art. In the workshop led by the famed Ilya Repin, he became acquainted with other artists who were to gain great acclaim – Malyavin, Kustodiev, Ostroumova-Lebedeva and others. In 1899, for his graduation, he painted on the theme of ‘Woe to the vanquished‘ and received a gold medal, the official title of ‘artist’, a government stipend and a scholarship to pursue his studies abroad. He travelled to Vienna, Rome, Florence, Venice and Munich. In Munich, he spent a few weeks studying at the art school of Anton Aschbe along with Borisov-Musatov. In 1904, he discovered Spain in the company of Kustodiev;  the same year he was awarded a gold medal at the International Exhibition of St. Louis for the painting “Parisian Woman.” Shmarov displayed his works at the Spring Salons of the Academy of Fine Arts. Between 1900 and 1910, he made a series of portraits of aristocrats, industrialists and prominent figures in the sciences and culture, as well as of the Czar Nicholas II and other members of the imperial family. They were so pleased with his work that he was appointed a court painter. He painted, as well, large scenes of battles, and decorative panels, and created drawings for newspapers (New Times, Evening Times), designs for the theatre, and illustrations for the works of Nekrasov and Pushkin and Zabelin.  In 1916, Chmarov was elected an academician of the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1917 he participated in the first exhibition of paintings, sketches and drafts of the Arkhip Kuinji Fund, and in 1919 at the first All-Russian Open Exhibition of art. At the beginning of 1923. Chmarov left Russia for Rome; at the end of the next year he settled in Paris. He worked mainly on commission, painting portraits (of, among others, Feodor Chaliapin and Sergei Lifar), landscapes with bathers or young peasant women in Russian costumes, imbued with nostalgia for his native land, as well as numerous still lifes. In 1928, his first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie Charpentier. Shmarov participated in exhibitions of Russian art in Paris and various cities in Germany, England, Holland, Belgium, Argentina and Yugoslavia. Until 1939, he continued to exhibit his works at the salons of French art, and produced theatrical works as well. During World War II, he moved with his family to Boulogne-Billancourt, where they became parishioners of the Orthodox Church of St Nicholas. Widely considered one of the most talented students of the great Repin, he achieved for himself acclaim as the Russian Renoir. Going by his oeuvre during his life in France – peasant women, bathers, children in national costumes – it would appear that he had never really abandoned his motherland. Above all else, Chmarov loved to paint bathing women, his first explorations manifesting themselves in the illustrations to Pushkin’s ‘Water Nymph’ in 1905. In Paris he continued the theme. He hardly ever put dates on his works, making it almost impossible to determine the trajectory of his progress. He himself said once, “I am painting a series ‘The Bathers’. This is with a palette of whites. Next will be greens. I have a violet still life. And that’s it.”