All that is known about Nikolai Saraphanoff's Russian past is that he was born in St. Petersburg in 1855. At the beginning of the 1920s, he fled to Istanbul, where, if only for a short time, he became a member of the Union of Russian Painters in Constantinople and participated in its exhibitions. It is known that he was admitted to membership on the ballot on December 21, 1922. After the collapse of the Union in 1923, Saraphanoff continued to communicate closely with local Russian-speaking émigrés; possibly because his Turkish was far from perfect and he struggled with the language barrier. As an example, we can cite his active participation in a major event dedicated to Russian culture in 1926 at one of the city’s Russian clubs, which was expressed in the creation of decorations. In addition, in 1927, together with other émigré artists and journalists, he not only worked on the almanac Les Russes sur le Bosphore but also created its cover. It is safe to say that he was well acquainted with Nikolai Kalmykoff and Dimitri Ismailovitch since they participated in almost all of the above activities together. Nikolai Saraphanoff painted many different views of the city, focusing mainly on the various mosques and streets in the old town. The reason behind this choice could be his desire to sell them as soon as possible because such artworks were in demand at the time. Now, they often can be seen at the local auctions. The artist himself had a rather tragic fate; a military court sentenced him to 25 years of imprisonment for “political guilt” ( Anonymous, "Ankara cinayeti etrafında dünkü yeni ifşaat", 1946). According to the émigré Roxana Umarova (with whom the researcher Marina Sığırcı had a chance to speak), shortly before the start of World War II, the artist was “falsely accused by the Turkish authorities of spying for Soviet Russia” (Sığırcı 2018, 79).