December 13, 2020 - January 16, 2021: Issue 478

 

NICHOLAS HIMONA – Artist

Evpatoria.  Mosque with Greek Orthodox Church in distance. Early 20th Century.

NICHOLAS HIMONA – Artist

by George Repin

Nicholai Petrovich Himona was born in Evpatoria Crimea, into a Greek community, part of the Greek diaspora around the Black Sea.  The Crimean Peninsula at that time was part of Russia. Although assimilated into the Russian way of life the Greeks tended to maintain their culture and spoke Greek in their homes, and Russian in the community.  Himona’s date of birth is uncertain – being some time in 1865 or 1866.


Evpatoria street scene with Greek Orthodox Church.  Early 20th Century.


Evpatoria street scene with minaret.  Early 20th Century.

As he worked in Russia and in Greece his name appears both in Kyrillic and Greek script, so that the transliteration into English script varies in different sources where the following variations appear, inter alia:  Cheimonas, Cheimon, Chimonas and Khimona.

He is one of the few Greek artists listed in the BENEZIT – Dictionary of Artists, published in Paris in 2006, Editions Gründ. (His entry is in Volume 3Bulow to Cossin).   See note below.

Himona was primarily a painter of landscapes – and is known for his harmonious compositions and knowledgeable and delicate rendering of light.  He studied with Arkhip Ivanovich KUINDZHI at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg (Imperatorskaya Academia) from 1890 to 1894 and later taught there (1896 to 1918) and exhibited his landscapes.  After a visis to Greece in 1920 he took part in numerous collective exhibitions in Paris, Munich, London and the USA.

Some of his paintings are in the Dimotiki Pinakothiki and the Ethniki Pinakothiki in Athens, the Dimotiki Pinakothiki in Rhodes, the Gosudarstvenny Russkij Muzee in St. Petersburg and in the Treyakovskaya Gallereia in Moscow.

He died on Skyros, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, in 1929.

In the early 20th Century the Ottoman influence, which had been strong in Crimea for a long time, was still apparent in the architecture and the presence of mosques in Evpatoria.

Himona had a close relationship with the Hrisonopoulo family because his sister Maria had married Michael Hrisonopoulo. He painted his niece their daughter, Alexandra Hrisonopoulo, as a young girl.


Himona's niece, Alexandra Hrisonopoulo as a young girl.

No photographs of Himona for inclusion in this article could be located other than two annotated photographs held by the Hrisonopoulo family in which there is a glimpse of the man.  Photographs of some of his paintings accompany this article.


Hrisonopoulo group.  Maria, Himona's sister, on Right.  His niece Alexandra (aged 16) in the front.  The shadowy figure in the back is Himona. 1908


Boating near Evpatoria.  The man with black cap on port side is Himona.  1908

A NOTE ON THE BENEZIT DICTIONARY OF ARTISTS
The Benezit Dictionary of Artists is an extensive publication of bibliographical information on painters, sculptors, designers and engravers created primarily for art museums, auction houses, historians and dealers.

Originally put together by Emmanuel Benezit (1854-1920) and a team of collaborators, the Dictionary was published in the French language by Editions Gründ in Paris in three volumes between 1911 and 1923. Subsequent editions followed in 1948 to 1955 (8 volumes), 1976 (10 volumes) and 1999 (14 volumes).  An English edition was published for the first time in 2006.  Both editions contain over 20,000 pages.  The English edition has a greater coverage of English and American artists than does the French edition.  The publication was acquired by the Oxford University Press in 2010. The price of the 1999 French edition is £1,932.50 and of the English Edition £2,030.

Lake with trees - Nicholai Petrovich Himona 

Statue of Lord Byron at Misssolongha, Greece.  Painted 1923 - Nicholai Petrovich Himona 

Building interior - Nicholai Petrovich Himona 

Landscape - Nicholai Petrovich Himona 

Seascape - Nicholai Petrovich Himona 

Previous Reflections by George Repin 

The Nineteen Thirties  Remembering Rowe Street  The Sydney Push  Saturday Night at the Movies  Shooting Through Like A Bondi Tram  A Stop On The Road To Canberra  City Department Stores - Gone and Mostly Forgotten  An Australian Icon - thanks to Billy Hughes  Crossing The Pacific in the 1930s  Hill End  The Paragon at Katoomba  Seafood In Sydney  How Far From Sydney?  Cockatoo Island Over The Years  The Seagull at the Melbourne Festival in 1991  Busby's Bore  The Trocadero In Sydney  Cahill's restaurants  Medical Pioneers in Australian Wine Making  Pedal Power and the Royal Flying Doctor Service  Pambula and the Charles Darwin Connection  Gloucester and the Barrington Tops  A Millenium Apart  Have You Stopped to Look?  Gulgong  Il Porcellino  Olympia  Durham Hall  Sargent's Tea Rooms Pie Shops and Street Photographers  The Ballet Russes and Their Friends in Australia  Hotels at Bondi  Alma Ata Conference - 1978 Keukenhof - 1954 The Lands Department Building and Yellowblock Sandstone  The Goroka Show - 1958  A Gem On The Quay  Staffa  The Matson Line and Keepsake Menus Kokeshi Dolls  The Coal Mine At Balmain  The Hyde Park Barracks  The Changing Faces Of Sydney From Pounds and Pence to Dollars and Cents Nell Tritton and Alexander Kerensky  Making A Difference In Ethiopia William Balmain  J C Bendrodt and Princes Restaurant Azzalin Orlando Romano and Romano's Restaurant  Waldheim  Alcohol in Restaurants Before 1955  King Island Kelp  The Mercury Theatre   Around Angkor - 1963   Angkor Wat 1963  Costumes From the Ballets Russe Clifton at Kirribilli  Chairman Mao's Personal Physician  The Toby Tavern The MoKa at Kings Cross  The Oceaographic  Museum  in Monaco  The Island of Elba  Russian Fairy Tale Plates  Meteora  Souda Bay War Cemetery Barrow, Alaska  Cloisonné  Tripitaka Koreana Minshuku The Third Man Photographs and Memories  Not A Chagall!  Did You Listen? Did You Ask?  Napier (Ahuriri, Maori) New Zealand  Borobudur  Ggantija Temples Plumes and Pearlshells  Murano  University of Padua  Ancient Puebloe Peoples - The Anasazi   Pula  The Gondolas of Venice Cinque Terre  Visiting the Iban David The Living Desert Bryce Canyon National Park   Aphrodisias   The Divine Comedy Caodaism  Sapa and local Hill People  A Few Children  Cappadocia  Symi Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre   Aboriginal Rock Art on Bigge Island    ANZAC Cove (Ari Burnu) 25 April, 1997  Hotere Garden Oputae  Children of the Trobriand Islands  Page Park Market - Rabaul  Rabual   Kotor, Montenegro   Galleries of Photographs I   Lascaux  Galleries of Photographs II   The Cathedral of St. James – Šibenik, Croatia  Ivan Meštrović  - Sculptor   Delphi   Gallery of Photographs III  The Handicrafts of Chiang Mai Raft Point  San Simeon - "Hearst Castle"  Floriade - The Netherlands - 1982  Russian New Year  Mycenae  "Flightseeing" Out Of Anchorage Alaska  The White Pass and Yukon Route  Totem Poles  Tivkin Cemetery  Krka National Park - Croatia  Tavistock Square and the BMA  Orthodox Easter  Wieliczka Salt Mine  A Walk on Santorini  Indonesian Snapshots  Ephesus - The Library of Celsus  Ephesus - Some Places Of Interest  Waimea Canyon and the Kalalau Valley United Nations Headquarters 1958  A Miscellany of Flower Images  Gardens  Bath St. David's In Wales   Zion National Park Nicholas Himona - Artist  Kraków  Lilianfels  Collonges-La-Rouge  Gingerbread Houses   Cape Sounion   Delos  Wroclaw  Colonial Williamsburg  Gruyères   Strasbourg  Coventry Cathedral  The Roman Theatre at Aspendos  Turkish Carpets The Duomo of Orvieto  Rovinj  The City Walls of Dubrovnik Monaco - Snapshots   Bonifacio, Corsica  Autumn in New England USA  The Great Ocean Road  Pompeii  Didyma  Lawrence Hargrave 1850-1915  The Corinth Canal  Malta  Snapshots of Amsterdam Café Central - Vienna  The Forbidden City - Beijing, China  A Ride on the Jungfrau Railway - 1954   Snapshots in the Highlands of Scotland 1954  Must See Sights in Paris - 1954  Corfu  Reflections On the Nineteen Thirties The Gold Souk in Dubai  Stromboli   Ha Long Bay - Vietnam  Lake Argyle The Bungle Bungle Range Langgi Inlet, W.A.  White Cliffs, NSW - 1990  Sturt National Park - May, 1990 A Few Statues and Water Spouts  The Dodecanese Archipelago  Rhodes  Lindos The Church on Spilled Blood - 2005 Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad Repin's In "Ladies In Black"  Signs of the Times at Sydney Museum: Repin Inns

Copyright George Repin 2019. All Rights Reserved.