Background

Sureniants was born in Akhaltsikhe, Georgia, on February 27, 1860. He was the son of Hakop Sureniants, a priest and religious teacher. Later Sureniants' father was appointed a presbyter to the Armenian diocese in Moscow.

Education

Vardges Sureniants' family moved from Akhaltsikhe to Simferopol in 1868. Some years later they moved to Moscow. There Sureniants had a chance to study at the Armenian Lazarian School (later known as the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages). He continued his education at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (later Surikov Art Institute in Moscow), where he studied from 1876 to 1879. Right after his graduation, Vardges Sureniants went to Munich, Germany. There he studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, graduating from the academy in 1885.

Career

In his early career as an artist, Sureniants was interested in caricatures and sketches. Later he got into painting and line drawing. Some of Sureniants' caricatures were published in the Fliegende Blätter magazine. He also produced illustrations for such literary works as Alexander Pushkin's The Fountain of Bakhchisaray, Ferdowsi's Shahname, the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde as well as works by the Belgian poet Georges Rodenbach, the Armenian writer Smbat Shahaziz and Alexander Tsaturyan.

Sureniants went to Italy in 1881 and visited the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni. There in the library of the Armenian Catholic congregation of the Mechitarists, he studied Armenian fine art as well as Armenian manuscripts. The artist produced portraits of Mikayel Chamchian among others.

In the year 1883, Vardges Sureniants wrote his first article entitled A Few Words about Armenian Architecture. It was published in the Armenian newspaper Meghu Hayastani. In 1885-1887, he visited such Persian cities as Tabriz, Isfahan, Tehran, and Shiraz, accompanying the Russian orientalist Valentin Zhukovski's expedition. After his travels, he translated William Shakespeare's Richard III. He sent his translation to Constantinople so that actor Bedros Adamian could have it produced. From 1890 to 1891 he taught art history at the Gevorkian Seminary in Armenia.

Sureniants visited Ani, Lake Sevan and became familiar with the everyday customs of rural Armenian life in 1892. The same year, he went to Moscow where he became connected with many artistic circles. In 1901 the first and only exhibit of his artworks was organized in Baku. During 1901-1902 he worked on a bust of the Russian Armenian painter Ivan Aivazovsky.

In the 1900s-1910s Sureniants designed for theatres in Moscow and St Petersburg. During the Armenian Genocide, Vardges Sureniants created a great number of paintings of survivors who found refuge in Russian Armenia. In the year 1916, the artist moved to Tiflis. There he and some other artists, including Mardiros Saryan and Panos Terlemezian, founded the Armenian Artistic Society.

He moved to Yalta in 1917 where he was commissioned to draw the decorations for the newly built Armenian cathedral. Sureniants designed the altar, walls, and dome of the church. While decorating the church he suffered a grave illness, and eventually died on 6 April 1921.

Achievements

• 

  Vardges Sureniants played an instrumental role in reviving Armenian historical events through the medium of art. There have been many posthumous exhibitions in his honour, including exhibits in Venice (1924), Yerevan (1931, 1941, 1960, 2010). His most recent exhibition was held in 2010, to celebrate Sureniants' 150th anniversary.
  
  He was well known in the art community and befriended a number of renowned Russian artists including Igor Grabar, Aleksandr Golovin, Vasily Polenov, and the sculptors Nikolay Andreyev and Alexander Matveyev. Ilya Repin was one of his most prominent admirers.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Semiramis and dead Ara the Beautiful

  • Alhambra. Spain

  • After the Massacre

  • The Departure of the Procession from St. Etchmiadzin Cathedral

  • Sketch of a girl

  • Sketch of Women

  • Portrait of Mkrtich Khrimyan

  • Return of Queen Zabel of Armenia

  • Salome

  • Torch

  • The Tsar and the Odalisque

  • Knight-woman

  • Salome

  • Desecrated Shrine

  • Refugee girl

  • Harem

  • Mokatsi girl

  • Japanese woman

  • Woman's portrait

  • Woman's portrait

  • Armenian girl

  • Portrait of a Woman

  • Serenade

  • The Greek woman painting the vases

  • Shatakh woman

  • Vienna Library

  • Cave in the cliffs

  • Mokatsi woman with festive dress

  • Folk Fairy Tale Design (Flowerpots)

  • A Man

  • Virgin and Child

  • Return of Queen Zabel of Armenia

  • Ferdowsi reading Shahname to Shah Mahmud Ghaznavi

  • Women Leaving a Church at Ani

  • Unknown man

  • The Departure of the Procession from St. Etchmiadzin Cathedral

  • Portrait of Idleson

  • The Virgin

  • The monastery of St. Hripsime

Views

Quotations: "Painters must paint life the way it appears in front of our eyes."

Membership

Vardges Sureniants became a member of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions in 1910.

• Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions

  1910

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Tigran Sargsyan: "Sureniants can well be ascribed to the family of the world's best artists, and our State has much to do in this respect: the celebration of his 150th anniversary should launch the process of his international recognition. I happened to discover an exciting detail as I familiarized myself with his life experience. During his lifetime, Sureniants had only one personal exposition: in Baku in 1901. Our initiative is exceptional from this point of view as we have tried to bring to the public’s attention all we could collect over time."
  
  Ilya Repin: "The paintings of Vardges Sureniants fascinated me the first time I saw them; he is a bright exemplar of the new [painting] school - his originality is of unusually high proportions, and his passionate love for the slightest detail is outstanding."
  
  Vladimir Stasov: "Sureniants' superior skill in painting the architecture of the East while paying close attention to the intricate details of its motifs provides his paintings a splendor of colorfulness."

Connections

Father:

Hakop Sureniants

References

• Historical Dictionary of Armenia The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Armenia relates the turbulent past of Armenia through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 200 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, events, places, organizations, and other aspects of Armenian history from the earliest times to the present.
  2010
• Armenia: with Nagorno Karabagh Bradt Travel Guides Series by Holding, Deirdre, Holding, Nicholas.
  2011