ALEXEI ALEXEIVICH HARLAMOFF

Alexei Alexeivich Harlamoff was born in 1850 to a peasant family in a small village on the river Volga, Russia.

In 1854, Alexi became a guest student at the most prestigious Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and in 1857 he won a silver medal for his drawing.

Alexei Harlamoff graduates from the Academy in 1868 and wins a first-class gold medal for his painting "Return of the Prodigal Son". This achievement allowed him to receive a scholarship to study in Paris, France, where he travelled via Germany and studied in 1872 under Leon Bonnat for one year.

Thereafter, Alexi visited Brussels and then London where he admired artworks by the Old Masters.

The Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg commissioned him to copy Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" displayed in the Hague. From 1871 he spent one year making a meticulous reproduction of this oil painting.

Alexei Alexeivich Harlamoff specialized in academic painting of women and children portraits. In 1878, Alexei Harlamoff exhibited his oil paintings simultaneously at the Salon and at the Universal Exhibition in Paris where he was awarded a second-class medal for his portrait of Alexander Fedorovich Onegin.

In 2008 his oil painting "The Arrangement" was sold at auction for US$1,000,000.

"Queen Victoria greatly admired his painting of children playing with flowers that was exhibited at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888. Harlamoff came to the attention of wealthy American and European collectors who appreciated his idealised portraits of young women and girls."