Few Russian artists of the 19th century have traveled a longer path. Alexey Kharlamov was born on October 18, 1840, in the village of Dyachevka, Petrovsky district of Saratov province, in a large family of a serf peasant, and died a famous master in Paris.

As a boy, he ended up in St. Petersburg and became a student of Professor A. T. Markov at the Imperial Academy of Arts. For his programmatic painting "The Baptism of the Kievans," he received a small gold medal in 1866, and for "The Return of the Prodigal Son" in 1868, he was awarded a large gold medal and the following year went abroad as a pensioner of the Academy.

In Paris, Kharlamov studied under Léon Bonn, traveled to Belgium and the Netherlands, where he studied the old masters. At the end of 1872, he returned to Paris for good and tied the rest of his life to it. A decisive moment was his acquaintance with Turgenev and the circle of Polina Viardo. The writer was enchanted by the young painter and placed him alongside Repin, calling them two remarkable artists. Kharlamov's portraits of Turgenev and Viardo are now considered classics.

Repin himself testified that his comrade passionately loved Paris and dreamed of staying there forever. And so it happened: Kharlamov rented a studio in Place Pigalle and turned it into a fashionable atelier. He signed his name in the French manner, Harlamoff. His later works, tender images of women and children, were hugely popular among European collectors.

For the Russian viewer, he long remained half-forgotten. Popular during his lifetime, he later found himself almost in the shadows, only occasionally returning to Russia. Kharlamov passed away in Paris on April 10, 1925, having witnessed how a wave of new emigration filled the city where he had lived for over half a century. The revival of his name began only recently: in 2007, a complete catalog of his works was published in Düsseldorf.