Nicolas Tarkhoff

Nicolas (Nikolai) Alexandrovich Tarkhoff was born in Moscow in 1871 into a family of wealthy merchants. In 1894 he sat the entrance exam for the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture but was refused admission, reportedly on account of his temperament. He instead found training informally, joining the studio of the Impressionist painter Konstantin Korovin in Moscow from 1897, and his early work was shown that year at the Society of Friends of Fine Arts exhibition in Moscow alongside Levitan, Korovin, and Serov.

Tarkhoff moved to Paris in late 1898, joining the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Academie Julian to strengthen his drawing; he also attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts without earning a degree. He remained based in France for the rest of his career, exhibiting regularly at the Salon des Independants, the Salon de la Societe des Beaux-Arts, and the Salon d'Automne. Vollard gave him a solo exhibition in 1906, and he showed again in a solo exhibition at Galerie Drouet in 1909. In 1907 he was elected an associate member of the Salon d'Automne. In 1913 his work was included in the Armory Show in New York, the exhibition that introduced European modernism to American audiences.

He continued to exhibit at the Salon d'Automne into the late 1920s. Tarkhoff purchased property in Orsay, near Paris, in 1911 and lived there until his death in June 1930, in documented poverty; the Association Les Amis de Nicolas Tarkhoff dates his death to 3 June 1930, while other biographical sources give 5 June 1930. Both dates place his death in Orsay, France.

Contemporaries responded to Tarkhoff's work through a small circle of champions on both sides of Paris and Moscow. In France, critics including Guillaume Apollinaire, Forthuny, Ary-Leblond, and Mercereau wrote about his painting, and Ambroise Vollard's decision to give him a dedicated show in 1906 placed him inside one of the most consequential dealer networks of the period. His 1907 election as an associate member of the Salon d'Automne is a further sign that Parisian peers took his color-driven painting seriously. In Russia, art historians and critics including Sergei Makovsky, Alexander Benois, and Kazimir Malevich wrote about his oeuvre, though contemporaries also noted that recognition in his native country lagged behind his French reputation. Some dealer literature describes him as an early pioneer of Fauvism alongside Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck, a characterization more common in market-facing sources than in academic art history, which more often places him within Russian Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

Tarkhoff's secondary market is active but modest in scale. Artprice tracks around 950 auction results for him and notes his strongest 2025 sales came through German auction houses. The French valuation service Mr Expert gives indicative auction ranges of roughly EUR 600 to EUR 30,000 for paintings and EUR 150 to EUR 2,000 for drawings and watercolors, figures that describe the typical band of his market rather than a single record sale. No single auction result could be confirmed as his all-time high from the sources available for this profile; that figure is left unpublished here pending direct verification against a primary auction-house record.

There is no published catalogue raisonne for Tarkhoff. The Association Les Amis de Nicolas Tarkhoff, also known as the Comite Nicolas Tarkhoff and directed by Guy Abot, maintains an archive and repertory of his work and is the closest thing to an authentication authority, actively seeking out and documenting paintings to complete its records. No commercial gallery currently represents the estate. Confirmed museum holdings in the available record include the MUDO, Musee de l'Oise, the Musee d'Art et d'Industrie in Roubaix, and a museum in Grenoble, all in France, per the Association's biography, though broader institutional presence could not be independently verified here. Given the relatively small, German-weighted auction market Artprice describes and the wide price bands reported by French valuation services, collectors should treat any single sale result with caution and confirm provenance directly with the Association before acquisition.