This article is about the Russian painter. For the German architect, see Elisabeth Böhm.
Elisabeth Boehm or Böhm (née Endaurova, Russian: Елизавета Меркурьевна Бём, romanized: Yelizaveta Merkuryevna Byom; 1843–1914)[1][2] was a Russian painter, a popular designer of postcards.[3][4]
Biography
She was born in Saint Petersburg to a noble Russian family of Endaurov (Эндауров) of Tatar origin. She spent her childhood in the estate of her parents, in the village of Schiptsy, Poshekhonsky, Yaroslavl Governorate. At the age of 14 she entered the School of Painting at the Society for Promotion of Artists (Школа Поощрения Художеств) where she studied under Ivan Kramskoi and Pavel Chistyakov.[5] In 1865 she graduated from the school with the Large Silver Medal.[6] She took private lessons from Kramskoi and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts where she was awarded a Large Encouragement Medal for her animal paintings.[6]
Still she is mostly known as one of the most prominent Russian authors of postcards. She created more than 350 postcards,[7] most of which printed by the St. Eugenia Welfare Society (Благотоворительное Общество Святой Евгении). She created a recognisable style of postcards, which depict children's faces and silhouettes. According to the study of Tretyakov and Gutterman, she was the most reprinted author of postcards in the Russian empire.[4]