Efim Alexandrovich Tikhmenev

Efim Alexandrovich Tikhmenev was a Russian painter and graphic artist, born in 1869 and active into the early twentieth century. His exact birthplace, and the exact date and place of his death in 1934, are not documented in any source located for this profile. Russian-language references also record an artist under the name Evgeny Alexandrovich Tikhmenev with identical life dates, matching subject matter, and the same "E. Tikhmenev" signature form, and researchers treat this as the same painter under two transliterations of his given name rather than as two separate artists.

He specialized in animal and hunting subjects, working in oil and in graphic illustration. During his studies he received a small and a large silver encouragement medal for life drawing, though the specific academy and the years of study are not recorded in the sources reviewed. His drawings and graphics were reproduced regularly in the Russian illustrated magazines Niva, Rodina, and Iskry, though this claim rests on a single gallery-biography source and should be treated as provisional. A documented signed work, Wolf Hunt with Borzois, an oil on canvas measuring 57.5 by 89 centimeters, is dated 1904. Other known compositions include Bison, Elk, and a number of hunting and forest landscapes.

No museum collection or exhibition history with a named venue and confirmed year could be verified for this artist in the sources reviewed. This does not necessarily mean none exists, only that it is not documented in the accessible record.

Documented critical commentary on this artist is sparse. A Russian gallery biography, a single source not independently corroborated elsewhere, quotes a period review, published in the magazine Rodina, describing the dramatic tension of his hunting scene "At the Lair" (У берлоги), in which spirited dogs rouse a sleeping bear that turns on them in fury. The reviewer's name and the exact publication date are not recorded in the source, so the passage can be cited as a documented period reaction but not as an attributable, dated critical quote.

MutualArt identifies the record price for this artist at auction as USD 103,593 for Hunting Scene, sold at Sotheby's London in 2015; the exact day and month of that sale are not given in the source. A separate, lower-value sale is also documented: Bison (1910) sold for SEK 25,000 (about EUR 2,910 at the time reported), against a presale estimate of SEK 30,000 to 40,000; the auction house and exact sale date for that result are likewise not recorded in the source consulted. MutualArt's aggregate figures show roughly 29 works by this artist sold at auction over time, indicating a small but ongoing secondary market rather than a single landmark sale.

Two further sales are reported but not independently corroborated under the artist's canonical name with a confirmed house, date, and lot record beyond a single citation: an "Elk in the Forest" (1907), reported at GBP 56,250 in a London Russian art sale, and a differently titled Hunting Scene attributed to "Evgeny Tikhmenev," which sold at MacDougall's on 8 June 2016 for GBP 5,460. Both figures are below the confirmed USD 103,593 Sotheby's result and are noted here only for completeness, not as competing records.

This is a thin, historical secondary market with real attribution risk. Sources alternate between "Efim Alexandrovich" and "Evgeny Alexandrovich" as the artist's given name, so provenance and cataloguing should be checked carefully against the signature form and life dates (1869 to 1934) rather than the given name alone. No catalogue raisonne exists, no current gallery or estate representation could be verified, and no museum collection holdings could be confirmed in public databases, which means expert reports and signature comparison carry more weight than they would for a better-documented artist. Given the small number of verifiable auction results, any single sale price, including the USD 103,593 Sotheby's record, should be treated as an isolated data point rather than as evidence of a stable market trend.