Vonifaty Isaakovich Khudoyarov was the sixth of 13 children of Isaak Fyodorovich Khudoyarov and his wife Vasilisa Mikhailovna. Isaak Khudoyarov, a famous Nizhny Tagil lacquerer and artist, noticed his son’s talent early on. He placed great hopes on him to continue the family business. In 1851, when Vonifaty was 12 years old, he became one of the regular students of the preparatory department of the Vyysk factory school on full master’s provision.
The self-portrait of Vonifaty Khudoyarov is a chest-length image of a fragile young man wearing a dark austere suit. Thin oval face, high forehead, barely noticeable shadow of a mustache over plump lips, light blush, open attentiveness of large gray eyes — such was the youth of the artist, who began his ascent to the heights of professional mastery. It was perhaps for the first time that he tried not just to achieve a physical similarity, but also to speak about his character, mood, and emotions.
This chest-length portrait belongs to one of the most significant periods in the life of the Nizhny Tagil artist. He made it almost immediately after entering the Imperial Academy of Arts. An important role in the fact that the young artist was admitted to this highly professional institution belonged to Pavel Pavlovich Demidov, a future industrialist, who at the time was just a graduate of St. Petersburg University with a degree of candidate. It was to him that Vladimir Karlovich Rashet, the manager of the factories, appealed with a petition to patronize Vonifaty Khudoyarov.
At the end of July 1860, Pavel Demidov expressed his gracious consent to granting freedom to Vonifaty Khudoyarov and his admission to the Academy. In 1861, the artist brilliantly passed the entrance examinations, becoming an academist, that is, a full-time student of the Academy. However, such desirable training in this educational institution did not give Vonifaty Khudoyarov the opportunity to gain wealth and prosperity. In addition, his health, fragile since childhood, caused trouble. The talent was not destined to develop; Vonifaty Khudoyarov died of tuberculosis in 1870.
