Simka Simkhovitch (1893-1949) was one of the accomplished Russian-American painters of the first half of the twentieth century, whose classical draftsmanship and romantic sensibility gave his pictures a distinctive character within American painting of his era. Simkhovitch was born near Kiev, Russia. When he was seven, he spent a year in bed with a severe case of measles, and to amuse himself he began sketching an old mill outside his window, an early experience that led him to decide he would become an artist. He studied at an art school in Odessa and was recommended to attend the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, a singular honor in Russia at the time, before the war and revolution intervened.

Swept into the army before he could attend the Imperial Academy, Simkhovitch nonetheless continued his artistic work, and his pictures were hung in the Museum of Revolution in Leningrad. He resumed his formal studies in 1914 and graduated four years later. He was sent to the United States in 1924 to produce illustrations for Soviet textbooks, and once in America he quickly applied for and gained United States citizenship.

Simkhovitch integrated into the New York art world almost immediately, and galleries such as Midtown Galleries and Marie Sterner took him on as part of their represented artists. He was also employed by the Works Progress Administration and executed major mural commissions throughout the country, including a large project for the Mississippi Court House. Life magazine profiled him twice with full-length features. When he died at a relatively early age, the Whitney Museum of American Art offered to mount a retrospective, but his widow declined the offer and placed his works into storage, an unfortunate decision that has contributed to his relative obscurity since.

Considered a master draftsman and an adherent of a certain classical discipline, Simkhovitch's compositions are often built up in complicated but well-managed counterpoint. At heart, however, he was a romantic who preferred the dreamy colors of a Russian fairy tale, and his mature paintings combine rigorous training with the warmly poetic sensibility that gives his best pictures their enduring appeal.