118 - Nikolai Saraphanof (20th century),

Nikolai Saraphanof (20th century), In the Courtyard of the Mosque. Watercolor. Signed and dated (Stamboule). 43.3 x 49.5 cm (image size). 60.5 x 46.5 cm (framed). Nikolai Saraphanof (1855–?) (Николай Сарафанов), a Russian painter born in Saint Petersburg, about whom very little is known prior to his exile. Fleeing Russia in the early 1920s, he settled in Istanbul, where he joined the Union of Russian Painters of Constantinople and later became president of the Society of Russian Artists in Istanbul between the two world wars. He is best known for his numerous views of the city (mosques, streets of the old city) and for illustrating the cover of the almanac *The Russians on the Bosphorus* in 1927. He worked alongside other émigrés such as Nikolai Kalmykoff and Dimitri Ismailovich (...).