Arshak Fetvadjian

Arshak Abrahami Fetvadjian (; October 1, 1866 – October 7, 1947) was an Armenian artist, painter and designer. He is best known for his watercolor paintings of the architectural monuments of the medieval Armenian city of Ani, and for designing the currency and postage stamps of the first Republic of Armenia (1918–1920). As a result of over 20 years devoted to art, Fetvadjian produced no less than 2,000 works, varying from pencil drawings to watercolors, that depicted historically significant churches, monasteries, chapels and palaces. A considerable number of his other works were also portraits of Armenians at the turn of the 20th century.

Biography Fetvadjian was born in Trabzon in 1866, in the then Ottoman Empire. He attended a national art institute in the city of his birth and continued his studies at the State Fine Arts School (Imperial Academy of Art) in the capital at Constantinople, which had only been recently opened by an Armenian sculptor named Yervant Vosgan. Fetvadjian graduated from the academy in 1887 and pursued higher learning abroad: he left for Rome and was admitted to the San Luca Art Academy, where he was taken under the wing of Italian painter and sculptor Cesare Maccari. The painting shows a woman breastfeeding her child, a rifle in hand, with the child in the painting representing Armenia. The printing was conducted in Europe, and some of Fetvadjian's attractive designs featured animal motifs that were found on the decorations in Ani.

Fetvadjian's works were highly valued for preserving a visual memory of Armenian artwork that otherwise might have been lost forever during the turbulent years following the end of the Russian Empire. Armenian historian Vahan Kurkjian gives credence to that belief, stating "Many valuable relics of Armenian art and architecture of the sixth to thirteenth century, which had escaped the ravages of time were destroyed during the last incursions of 1917-1921, and would have been eventually forgotten had it not been for Fetvadjian's meticulously exact paintings of them."

His remains were interred in the capital Yerevan.

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