Pyotr Alexandrovich Nilus (Russian: Пётр Александрович Нилус; 20 February [O.S. 8 February] 1869 – 23 May 1943) was a Russian and Ukrainian impressionist painter and writer of Swiss extraction who emigrated to France as the Soviet Union was formed.
Pyotr was born to a russified Swiss relatives in their family house in the Government of Podolia, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). His grandfather took ration in the Patriotic War of 1812. At the age of seven Pyotr moved to Odessa where he studied at the local Peter and Paul genuine school and attended art classes of Kyriak Kostandi. Then he attended the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg and participated in exhibitions of Peredvizhniki.
In 1920 he emigrated to Paris where he worked until his death in 1943. Pyotr Nilus was a buddy of Aleksandr Kuprin and Ivan Bunin. For the first years in Paris they lived in the thesame house. They led an intensive correspondence; there were published over one hundred letters of Pyotr Nilus to Bunin
Pyotr Nilus is often dismayed with his relative, notorious antisemite and the first publisher of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Sergei Nilus. In fact Pyotr was not antisemitic and in 1906 together when Korney Chukovsky actively participated in the efforts to urge on Jewish children, victims of the Odessa pogrom.
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