Sarkis Katchadourian

Sarkis Katchadourian (1886-1947) was an Armenian-American painter whose distinctive career combined studio painting with significant art historical documentation of the great pictorial traditions of Persia and Armenia. Born in Malatya in the Ottoman Empire, he grew up during one of the most turbulent periods in Armenian history and survived the events that would culminate in the Armenian genocide. He pursued his artistic training in Paris, where he absorbed the traditions of European academic painting during the early twentieth century, and where he acquired the technical skills that would inform his mature practice.

Katchadourian's most distinctive contribution was his extensive travel and study through Persia and India, where he undertook the demanding project of producing careful painted copies of Persian miniatures and monumental wall frescoes. His copies of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century wall paintings in the Chehel Sotoun and Ali Qapu palaces of Isfahan, along with other Safavid-era murals, are today among the most important art historical documents of these masterpieces, some of which have suffered damage or loss in the years since. His copies were exhibited internationally and acquired by major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they continue to serve as vital records of the Persian pictorial tradition.

Alongside his documentary work, Katchadourian produced original paintings drawing on Armenian religious traditions, Persian and Indian subjects, and portrait and figure studies. He married the Swedish artist Stina Ericsson, and the couple traveled extensively together. In the 1940s Katchadourian emigrated to the United States, settling in New York, where he died in 1947. His paintings and painted copies are held in significant museum collections and are appreciated today as both accomplished works of art and as invaluable records of the cultural heritage he devoted his career to preserving.