Career
He is believed to be the only professional painter of Chechen origin in the 19th century. In 1819, during the Caucasian War Russian troops found a dead woman and a dying wounded three-year-old baby in the Chechen aul Dady-Yurt. The commander-in-chief of the Russian army Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov ordered military medics to do everything possible to save this baby despite all medical advice saying that it was impossible.
Against all the odds the baby survived.
The baby was given for nursing to Cossack Zakhar Nedonosov. From the name of this Cossack the baby got his surname and patronymic.
Later Pyotr appended the word Chechenets to his surname in order to show his ethnic identity. The boy showed talent in painting and Pyotr Yermolov tried to send him to the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint St. Petersburg but he was rejected.
The boy got his lessons from the portraitist Lev Volkov.
At the age of 17, he eventually entered the Academy and graduated in 1835 with a diploma of Free Artist. The trip might have been helpful both for Zakharov"s artistic growth and for his health as he started to show signs of tuberculosis. Nevertheless, Zakharov"s name was withdrawn from the list for the scholarship by Emperor Nicholas I of Russia himself as he insisted that national minorities (inorodtsy) should not benefit from the Academy"s scholarships.
Instead Volkov had her sent to relatives in the Caucasus with an order to marry her off to any first-comer just to stop the affair.
Zakharov worked a lot and soon became a fashionable portraitist. In 1837, he was admitted to the state service as an Artist at the Military Department.
On 14 January 1846, Zakharov married his beloved bride but their happiness was short. Many works of Zakharov-Chechenets are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery and in the Russian Museum.
In 1995 during the First Chechen War the Grozny Museum was heavily damaged and the paintings were all but destroyed.
Since 1995, they are being restored at the Grabar Restoration Center in Moscow.