Ivan Pokhitonov

Ivan Pavlovich Pokhitonov (; – ) was a Russian landscape painter and graphic artist, who spent much of his working life in France and Belgium.

After the Bolshevik Coup he moved to the south of Ukraine, where the Ukrainian army was active. After the Ukrainian movement collapsed in 1921, he left the country.

Biography He was born on a large farm in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) to Pavel Pokhitonov and Varvara Alekseevna. His father was a retired military man who had received a title of nobility, was a member of the Kherson governing committee, supervised the local Zemstvo school and was an honorary magistrate. His mother was from a family of Serbians that had come during the 18th century. He later attended several other schools.

In 1868, he entered the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy in Moscow. At that time, many of the students there held revolutionary opinions, and he attended speeches lamenting the plight of small farmers. He became caught up in the complicated events involving the nihilist Sergey Nechayev, but escaped serious punishment. He was, however, expelled and sent home to be supervised by his father and the police. He exhibited regularly at the Salon and several of his paintings were purchased by Pavel Tretyakov. Later, he would sign a lucrative contract with Georges Petit. She went on to become a prominent dermatologist and medical researcher.

He spent eight months painting in Italy, at a small village outside Naples then, deciding that he could no longer live in Paris, he and Eugenia moved to Liège, Belgium. They continued to travel throughout Western Europe and Russia and, in 1895, he became an honorary member of the Peredvizhniki. In 1901, he acquired an estate in the Minsk Governorate, where he lived and worked until 1906, when he returned to Belgium. He was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1904. During World War I, he lived in Saint Petersburg until the beginning of the Revolution, then fled to Kuban, where he stayed for a year.

Back in Belgium, he initially lived in De Panne, then moved to Brussels. His eyesight had been failing for several years and he painted little after that. In 1922, he had his last exhibition. A major retrospective was held in 1925.

Selected landscapes