Rago Auctions

Painter Abraham Bogdanove was born in Minsk, Russia (now Belarus) in 1888. He immigrated with his family to New York City in 1900. Over the next decade, Bogdanove went on to study at the Cooper Union, National Academy of Design, and Columbia University's School of Architecture. He also produced painted advertisements for the New York Journal and began to take on commissions, including for murals at Fleischman Baths in Midtown, the Hebrew Sheltering and Guardian Society in Pleasantville, New York, and various New York area schools. Bogdanove also taught art at local schools from 1913 until 1942.

After visiting Maine for the first time in 1915, Bogdanove found his true home in the United States. His initial trip was to Mount Desert Island near Bar Harbor. Subsequently, Bogdanove journeyed to Monhegan Island off the coast of Boothbay Harbor in 1918 and purchased a house there in 1920. Enchanted by the isolated setting and rugged natural beauty, and a climate relatively similar to his native Russia, Bogdanove would visit Monhegan Island annually until his passing in 1946. Over the course of nearly three decades, he became highly skilled at painting coastal landscapes and seascapes, which some have compared stylistically to the works of Winslow Homer.

Bogdanove retired from teaching in 1942 and moved to Dunbarton, New Hampshire, but he continued to visit Monhegan Island in his final years. During his lifetime, works by Bogdanove were exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Corcoan Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and elsewhere. Posthumously, Bogdanove retrospectives were held at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine in 1957, the College of the City of New York in 1961, and the Spanierman Gallery in New York from 1997 to 2000.