Nadja Stember, wife of the artist

Nadejda Georgievsky Stember, wife of the artist, was born in 1861 in Nicopol, Ukraine on her parents estate.  She had three sisters, Anya, Vera and Sonya and her parents were Sophie Apukhtin and Dmitri Georgievsky.  Her Grandmother Anna Pavlovna Apukhtin lived in Moscow and Nadia and her sisters spent many summers there.

Nadia's education was from personal tutors until she entered the Classical Fisher Gymnasium (College) in St. Petersburg and concentrated on Opera singing.  She was quite accomplished and after singing the main character role of Susanna in Mozart's Figaro in the Bolshoi theatre, she was convinced by a friend to move to Paris to study with an acclaimed voice coach, Pauline Viardot-Garsia.

Arriving in Paris in 1886, Nadia stayed in a boarding house on Rue Victor Hugo with other Russian young people, studying or starting their careers.  She met her future husband, Victor Karlovich Stember on her first day at the boarding house in which Victor also lived.  He invited Nadia to come with him to where he was working on painting a landscape on Boi-de-Boulogne (a park) and their love blossomed from there and culminated in their wedding in Nice, France in 1888.

Nadia was greatly acclaimed for her beautiful Operatic voice and style but had a difficult decision to make.  Marry Victor and support his career or not marry and pursue her own Operatic career.  In Nadia's diary, she writes of the anguish this decision caused her and how she was convinced by the artist Bobolubov that her beautiful singing was enjoyed and treasured while she was singing but Victors paintings would endure for generations.  She made her decision and stated that she never regretted her decision.

This painting was the last oil paintings done of her by Victor although two pencil sketches were done during the Russian Revolution when Nadia was in her 50's.  (Number 84 and 87).  Nadia is also painted as a young woman in painting # 94,   the model in # 6 nude sitting on a stool and in #156 as the back of a nude.  According to her daughter Natalie, this painting was painted of her mother while she was pregnant with Natalie, probably accounting for the painting to be of her back.