The Association “Les Amis de Nicolas Tarkhoff”  (The Friends of Nicolas Tarkhoff) was created on 5 November 2014 at the initiative of members of the artist’s family, researchers, historians, experts and enthusiasts of his work. It strives to promote the work of the painter in France and abroad, and defends its quality and name. 

It also constitutes archives and indexes all of the artist’s production (paintings, works on paper...) as well as all physical and digital documents concerning his life (articles, catalogs, photographs, writings, etc.). 

Nicolas Alexandrovich Tarkhoff (Николай Александрович Тархов) or Tarkhov was born in Moscow on 2nd January 1871 into a family of wealthy merchants. He is three years old on the death of his mother Olga Feodorova and eight years on the death of his father Alexander Ivanov. He showed early artistic vocation, "having always had a fervent desire to be a painter (1)". Nevertheless, he enlisted in the provincial militia at the age of eighteen to fulfil his military service obligations and subsequently found employment at the Brest-Litovsk Railways, thus delaying his entry into the world of art.

In 1894, he took the admission test for the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow, against the will of his family. The school jury, although less conservative than that of St. Petersburg, refused his admission because of his revolutionary temperament. In 1897, he joined the studio of the impressionist painter Konstantin Korovin Alexeivich (his elder by ten years) in Moscow. There he met Pavel Kuznetsov, Vasily Polenov and Valentin Serov.