Nilus, Petro

Nilus, Petro [Нілус, Петро; né Словецький; Slovetsky], b 21 February 1869 on the Busheny estate, Podilia gubernia, d 23 May 1942 in Paris, France. Painter. He studied under Kyriak Kostandi at the Odesa Art School (1883–9) and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts and was active in the Society of South Russian Artists and the Peredvizhniki society. From 1920 he lived abroad. Although he did some landscapes, he is best known for his large genre paintings, such as Doing the Rounds (1891), In the Tavern (1894), On the Boulevard (1895), At the Theater Box Office (1901), and In the Artist’s Studio (1903). After 1910 he diverged from his earlier realism and began using stronger colors and simpler lines, as in Golden Dreams, A Paris Street (1930), and Metro Exit (1942). Vasyl Afanasiev’s monograph about him was published in Kyiv in 1963.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]