Next year will be marked by the 195th anniversary of the eminent Russian painter of Chechen origin, Pyotr Zakharovich Zakharov. The previous anniversary was widely celebrated in Grozny in 2006 and now an initiative group in Moscow is preparing publication of unique recently-found materials concerning the biography of the artist.
Pyotr Zakharov lived a short (30 years) but bright life and created several avowed masterpieces of Russian portrait painting. In 1819, during the Caucasian War, Russian troops found a dead woman and a dying wounded three-year old baby in the Chechen village of Dady-Yurt. The commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov, ordered military medics to do everything possible to save this baby, despite all medical advice saying that it was impossible. Against all the odds the baby survived. The baby was given to Cossack Zakhar Nedonosov to be nursed. From the name of this Cossack the baby got his surname and patronymic. Later, the artist always signed his works as Zakharov-Chechenets (i.e. Zakharov the Chechen) to stress his original ethnic identity.
At the age of seven Pyotr was adopted by Major-General Pyotr Yermolov, Commander of the Georgian Grenadier regiment and a cousin of Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov. Despite having seven children of his own, Pyotr Yermolov liked Zakharov very much and treated him as his own son and encouraged him to enter the Imperial Academy of Arts. At the age of 17, he eventually entered the Academy and graduated in 1835 with a diploma of Free Artist.
Zakharov worked a lot and soon became a fashionable portraitist. His clients even included the favourite daughter of Nicholas I, the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna and her future husband Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg. In 1842 the Portrait of Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov caused him to become a member of the Academy of Arts, one of the youngest of his epoch. Pyotr Zakharov is considered to be the second-best Russian portrait-painter of the 19th century, after Karl Briullov.
Zakharov is best known for such works as the portrait of General Yermolov and the self-portrait in the national Chechen costume, the burka. Although he never had a chance to return to Chechnya, he always managed to maintain a spiritual connection with his motherland.
There are still a lot of gaps in his biography as we know it, still a lot of research to be done. The Union of Writers of the Chechen Republic has reached an agreement with several Moscow museums and archives to provide Zakharov’s biographers with all documents relating to his life and work. 13 of his previously unknown pictures have already been found, some of them proving that he had actually visited Caucasus after all.
The head of the Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, promised to sponsor these research projects. He considers them essential for the charitable educational initiative ‘Read Caucasus’, launched by the republic’s authorities. Publication of an album of reproductions of Zakharov’s works is being prepared.
The head of the research team, the famous Chechen writer Kanta Ibragimov, was recently nominated for the Nobel Prize for the second time for his novel about the destinies of children in the period of the Chechen war. He is now planning to create an historical novel about his renowned fellow countryman.
Today is a time of cultural rebuilding in Chechnya, and high culture goes hand in hand with mass culture. Over 100 masterpieces from the Chechen Art gallery, some of them painted by Zakharov, which were destroyed during the war, are now being restored in Moscow and will be returned to Grozny at some time in the future.
Timur Utsaev, Grozny, exclusively to VK
