Chaim Soutine Chaim Soutine, a member of the School of Paris from Belarus, is regarded by some critics as an artist of the caliber of Goya and Rembrandt. Chaim Soutine was born in 1894 in the small township of Smilavichy, 20 miles east of Mensk, and the tenth son of a tailor. To the dismay of his parents and the neighborhood, he soon showed a disturbing inclination towards painting. Finding the local rabbi's face most interesting, he asked permission to paint his portrait. This was considered a deep insult by the sons of the rabbi, who beat the young boy to the point that he had to be taken to the hospital. But all's well that end's well: in order to avoid a court action, the rabbi gave the boy the substantial amount of 25 rubles, which allowed him to leave Smilavichy and register at Jankel Kruger's School of Drawing in Mensk. There he met another young enthusiast of the arts, Michel Kikoine, and they both went to Vilnia to study at the School of Drawing and Commercial Art of that city. In order to survive, Chaim worked at a photographer's until a physician discovered his talent and sent him to Paris. In Paris, Chaim Soutine met, among others, Marc Chagall, Ossip Zadkine, Jacque Lipschitz, and Guillame Apollinaire. He entered l'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, which in itself indicates the high quality of the training he received in Mensk and Vilnia. He read poets and philosophers, and admired the works of Rembrandt, Courbet, Bonnard, Ensor, and some of the German Expressionists. In 1919, Zborowski, the art dealer, paid for his trip to Ceret, in Southern France, where Soutine spent three years and painted two hundred paintings. From then on, he became more and more famous until his death in 1941. Chaim Soutine was a painter almost by ''divine right''. Authenticity was his main characteristic. Unaffected by the new fashions and trends in the arts, he deliberately ignored every rule and technique of painting.
