Alexei Alexeevich Harlamoff (Dyachevka, October 18, 1840 - Paris, April 10, 1925) was a Russian painter. He enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg at the age of fourteen. In 1869 he was awarded a gold medal with a travel scholarship which enabled him to travel to Paris where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts under Leon Bonnat, whose work in portraiture was a strong influence on the young artist, prompting him to produce portraits of the poet Alphonse Daudet, the singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia in the 1870s. His portrait of Ivan Turgenev caught the eye of Emile Zola who rated it as among the best works of the Paris Salon of 1876. It was at Bonnats suggestion that in Harlamoff travelled to Spain in 1874 to study the work of Velasquez. His popularity waned in the later years of his life with the work after 1910 produced in a far more sketchy style.
[Sold for £61, 250 at Sotheby’s, London - Oil on canvas, 46 x 32 cm]