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Dimensions: measurements 25 3/4 by 20 in. alternate measurements 65.5 by 51 cm
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Provenance: Sale: Sotheby's Park Bernet, New York, February 24, 1983, lot 114
Sale: Grogan & Company, Boston, November 14, 1991, lot 103
Sale: Gary Wallace Auctioneers, New Hampshire, circa 1992
Sale: Sotheby's London, November 23, 2000, lot 90
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Literature: Olga Sugrobova-Roth and Eckart Lingenauber, Alexei Harlamoff Catalogue Raisonné, Düsseldorf, 2007, pp. 122, 124, illustrated
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Notes: We would like to thank Dr. Olga Sugrobova-Roth and Dr. Eckart Lingenauber for providing additional catalogue information.
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Alexei Harlamoff was born in the village of Dyachevka near Saratov on the Volga. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and he won both a gold medal and a scholarship in 1868. The scholarship enabled him to travel to Paris, where he studied under portrait painter Léon Bonnat, and by 1874 he was visited by Russian marine painter Alexei Bogoliubov, who reported back to Russia on the young artist's visible success.
In 1875, Harlamoff exhibited his portraits of Louis and Pauline Viardot to great acclaim, marking a turning point in his career. French writer Emile Zola found these portraits to be marvelous, and he too predicted the "debut of a great talent." Writer Ivan Turgenev was enchanted with the "little portrait-heads," so much that he openly called Harlamoff his favorite painter. By 1883, the artist had garnered international acclaim, and a writer for Novoe Vremia wrote of the extraordinary demand for the Russian's work from private collectors and art dealers in both London and Paris.
