Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Genre Scene, 1904, canvas, oil. 55 x 68 cm, private collection.
The name of the Itinerant artist, Semyon Nikiforov, who lived in the Ryazan region, is now known to connoisseurs of Russian painting all over the world.
Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Old Woman, 1904, canvas, oil, 138 x 97 cm, Sevastopol Art Museum named after M. P. Kroshitsky.
In 1905, Nikiforov joined the Itinerants. Despite the fact that he was haunted by an inferiority complex all his life, he actively exhibited his works at traveling exhibitions. Having a strong will and passionately feeling the thirst for life, this man took on any problem, without calculating his own strength. He wanted to be a titan, performing great feats, to fight with the help of art against all sorts of negative manifestations of life. And as a result, he worked at the limit of his body’s physiological capabilities, subjecting his weak nervous system to strain. Which is why he often ended up in hospitals. Nevertheless, when he was advised to take care of his health in order to preserve his vitality for the sake of further service to art, he mostly laughed it off. And if they directly said that he was driving himself into the grave ahead of time by overexerting himself at work, Nikiforov would answer that “a raven lives for two hundred years, but feeds on carrion, and it is better to fall immediately in battle than to drag out a long rigmarole of useless calm.”
Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Shepherd, 1907, canvas, cardboard, oil, 27 x 36 cm, private collection.
This was the artist’s life credo, which he never violated and proved with his whole life, having lived only thirty-five years.
In 1909, Semyon Gavrilovich’s heart began to work intermittently. Asphyxiation attacks appeared more and more often. The artist went to Crimea for treatment, and then to Italy. But the vaunted favorable climate and famous doctors did not help. At the end of 1911, Nikiforov visited his beloved Sazhnevo for the last time, and on February 25, 1912, he died in Moscow.
Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Cheremis by the Fire, 1905, canvas, oil. 17.5 x 25 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.
In 1985, when the current children’s tourist center “Silver Prudy” was being created on the site of the boarding school for children with speech defects that had previously existed in Sazhnevo, the walls of Nikiforov’s art studio that had still been preserved were destroyed. In which the artist’s most famous paintings were born – “Prasol”, “Women”, “The Storm is Coming”, “Arrived”. Now the works of Semyon Nikiforov are in the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan, in Perm, Sevastopol, and also in the Tretyakov Gallery. His paintings are also in the Ryazan Regional Art Museum.
Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, The Storm is Coming, 1908, canvas, cardboard, oil, 60 x 86 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Reading, 1900s, canvas, oil. 70 x 88 cm, Nikolaev Regional Art Museum named after V.V. Vereshchagin.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Russian Pavilion at the 1911 World Exhibition in Rome, 1911, canvas, oil, 49.8 x 61 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, On the San Remo Embankment, sketch for an unrealized painting. 1911, cardboard, oil, 50.5 x 68.2 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Unfinished male portrait, 1908, canvas, oil. 34.7 x 70.7 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, In a Blooming Garden, 1900s, canvas, oil, 102 x 55.5 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Seated Nude Model, 1903, canvas, oil, 149.5 x 74.3 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Through Force, sketch, 1899, canvas, oil. 63.5 x 61 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Barnyard in Winter, 1900s, canvas, oil. 67 x 123 cm, Perm State Art Gallery.Girl Braiding a Ribbon into Her Hair, 1897, oil on canvas, 82.5 x 66.2 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, Head of an Old Woman, 1891, canvas on cardboard, oil, 33 x 30 cm, Sevastopol Art Museum named after M.P. Kroshitsky.Model. Workshop of V.A. Serov, 1900, canvas, oil, 86 x 62 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.“Children of Prince P.N. Trubetskoy”, 1900, canvas, oil, State Museum of Arts of Kazakhstan named after A. Kasteev, Almaty.Nikiforov Semyon Gavrilovich, The Artist and the Model, 1904, canvas, cardboard, oil, 69 x 43.5 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Half naked model. Workshop of V.A. Serov, 1900, canvas, oil, 119 x 62 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Artist at work. Portrait of the artist’s wife Olga Natalina, 1904. Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin.Winter Landscape, 1900s, canvas, oil, 28 x 45 cm, Krasnodar Regional Art Museum named after F.A. Kovalenko.
