#date:1904

Painting: Oil on canvas.

Brittany’s rich heritage and traditional ways of life inspired many of Paris’ best-known artists, from Corot to Monet, Gauguin and Matisse. The advance of Impressionism in particular resulted in a surge of interest among artists eager to paint en plein air within reach of the French capital. This important early work by the ‘Moscow Parisian’ as Tarkhoff came to be known, is a superb pastoral scene in this tradition.  The subject and palette call to mind Gauguin’s 1886 Breton Shepherdess, while the alternation of lines and strokes recall the rhythmic brushwork of Paul Signac, who pioneered his pointillist techniques in the Breton port of St. Briac. As the critic Vasily Rakitin noted, ‘Tarkhoff hovers on the verge of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, retaining his own lyrical intonation and individuality in the variable game of different movements’.

In the early 1900s, Tarkhoff was represented in Paris by Ambroise Vollard, the art dealer famously instrumental in the careers of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne. Tarkhoff’s 1906 solo exhibition in Galerie Vollard brought him to prominence on the international stage. In the 1907 Salon d’automne exhibition, the exuberance of Tarkhoff's work led one reviewer to regard him as ‘part of the younger Bohemian crowd who outrage even the Byzantines and our North American Indians with their brilliant colour’ (quoted in E.Green, Nicolas Tarkhoff, Berry-Hill Galleries, 1989, p.7). The narrow dimensions of the present work are characteristic of Tarkhoff’s early canvases (for example Les chrysanthèmes, (1902), Boulevard animé à Paris (1903).

Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

The AIC's translation of Picasso's title into English actually made me lol: "Woman with a Helmet of Hair". Tocado can mean 'helmet', sure, but it also refers to any kind of updo, much like the English and French coif (which, by the way, is rooted in the late Latin cofia, 'helmet'). Did you know that the author of this blog is more of a language and linguistics nerd than an art nerd? Now you know!