A Friend or Brother? They Shared a Love of Art
***NOTE: UPDATE TO ORIGINAL POST***
Almost immediately after I published this story, A noted art historian on a Facebook group questioned whether Sarkis and Levon were actually brothers. He added some compelling arguments to Sarkis’s background that currently do not match with that as Levon being a brother. I’m more than happy to add amendments or notes of caution to any of the stories I publish. Genealogy is a moveable feast, and one must always be open to alternative suggestions. With an open mind, I add a caution to this story. I will however, keep it published, because, although Sarkis himself said his “brother, L. Katchadourian” was his next nearest relative in India on the 1941 passenger list, and he further said he was born in Taurus and was from Iran; both facts are now questionable.
The story about Sarkis smuggling, getting caught and subsequent sentencing in
Bombay, has never been revealed until I published it here. Furthermore, there is a great deal of family
history connected to Levon, that may help future family history researchers
with their own stories. I have therefore amended the story where appropriate,
and urge anyone interested in looking into this further to independently verify
all information.
Many know Sarkis as the artist who, amongst other great works of art, reproduced the Indian murals from cave paintings. They are an incredibly important contribution to India history, much has been written about his extraordinary work there as well as Persia. His wife Vava was also an artist in her own right. This blog isn’t about his work, but more about him and someone he stated was a brother. but was he?
In 1937, far from venturing into the country without a known support network, Sarkis was actually able to rely on someone who shared the same name; Levon Katchadourian.
Levon was a dental surgeon. He had trained in Berlin and Paris and moved to India in the early 1930s settling in Bombay. He had an excellent reputation in that bustling city, and, mirroring Sarkis' art interest, Levon was an avid and knowledgeable oriental art collector. He possessed a fine collection, acquired over many years, lovingly displayed at his home in Wodehouse Road, Bombay. It included rare stone and wood carvings dating from the 5th century, antique carvings of Jade, Quartz, Lapis, Lazuli, Carnelian, Agate, Turquoise, and Ivory as well as rare snuff bottles of Opal, Malachite, Jade, Quartz, Pekin Glass, antique ivory Netsukes, porcelain and pottery figures, bronzes, copper and brass items, Indo-Persian miniature paintings and Jade mounted plaques.
Between 1937 and 1939 as Sarkis was finding his feet in the caves of India, Levon focused on his own career. Nothing could have been so far removed from art, Levon was planning on attending a Congress Meeting of the Association for the research of Pyrohhea in Copenhagen, and placed notices and adverts locally encouraging other Bombay dentists to participate. Levon was a specialist in this area of dentistry.
While Sarkis was painstakingly making tracings to reconstruct the cave art impressions, Levon, his wife Gassia nee Madarentz and their children Quarnig, Wagharsh and Anahit respectively, busied themselves in local community life in Bombay. Although they were not born in India, Quarnig and Wagharsh originated in Germany whilst Anahit was born in Iraq, their formative years were spent in Bombay where they were educated. The boys attended the Bishop Cotton School, and did well in sports. From his base in Bombay, Levon went on to apply for British naturalisation in December 1937 for himself and the children. He would have been aware that anyone with a German nationality in India at the time of war was usually expelled; naturalisation put the family on the right side of colonial rule.
It was Levon that Sarkis noted as his next of kin whilst in India[1], but was he really a brother? Some thirty years later Vava was interviewed extensively by Barbara Kashian Gubbins in New York[2]. Vava recalled Sarkis’ time in India, and referred to Dr. & Mrs Katchadourian as “friends of Sarkis” with whom he stayed with when in Bombay. There was no mention that Dr. Katchadourian was related. Sarkis and Levon actually had a lot in common. Vava labelled Levon as a friend, Sarkis labelled Levon as a brother. I will leave it up to the more experienced professionals to establish who was right.
Whilst still conducting his work, Sarkis held exhibitions in India to showcase the reproductions he was undertaking. In February 1939 a well received exhibition was held at the Gwalior Archaeological Museum, attended by the Governor of Bombay, Sir Richard Lumley, his wife Lady Lumley and the Maharaja of Scindia. In March 1939 the Bombay Field Club hosted the exhibition at the University Convocational Hall. According to his wife Vava, Sarkis left India in 1939 for a brief time and travelled to Paris. He was back in India in May 1940 and exhibited at the newly opened Exhibition Salon of the Bombay Art Society, in the Sassoon Building Rampart Row. He also included his Ceylonese frescos as well as his Persian work. All in all, this exhibition was considered a real coup for the city of Bombay and it enchanted all who attended.
He also held an exhibition in Calcutta, and on the 14th February 1941, he took time to renew his passport there before embarking on his journey back to the USA from Bombay a month later. However, what is missing from Vava’s interview is a rather heart-stopping moment at the dockside in Bombay. Sarkis had a faltering start to the trip and fell foul of the law. He was booked to sail on 6th March 1941 on the President Monroe, it was scheduled to depart Bombay and sail via Cape Town and Trinidad to New York and Boston.
All passengers were instructed to bring their luggage to Alexandra Port, Bombay the day before the sailing to enable Customs checks. He was not travelling lightly and checked in 13 pieces of baggage, which were packed with his frescos from around the world. However, having filled out the Customs Declaration form stating he had no coins or bullion with him, he then hoped he could get away with deliberately smuggling 56 rare gold coins that he had sewn into the shoulders of his overcoat. This was a flip a coin, heads or tails moment. Could he have been thinking: “will I, or won’t I get away with this?”
In Vava’s interview with Barbara Gubbins, she focused on the monumental effort Sarkis made in order to successfully complete the drawings, and rightly so. What she didn’t draw to Barbara’s attention was the local Customs Preventive Officer in Bombay who stopped and searched Sarkis and discovered the haul of Turkish, Russian and English treasure. Sarkis was swiftly prohibited from boarding, removed from the dockside and kept in custody for two days. A Court was convened on Saturday 8th March, Sarkis pleaded guilty and the Magistrate convicted him of smuggling under the Defence of India Rules. The Chief Presidency Magistrate of Bombay made it clear to Sarkis that he faced either a R500 fine or three months’ rigorous imprisonment. Given his guilty plea, and rather incredibly, Sarkis couldn’t help himself and asked the Court if he could keep the coins “as a provision against a slump in business”. A guilty man with a whole lot of cheek! Who knows if this was a bravado moment or a genuine request, but the Magistrate, clearly feeling a modicum of sympathy for the guilty artist said that in view of his age, he would pass the least sentence. Sarkis was fined. It’s unknown if he was allowed to keep the coins.
Given who he was, what he had been doing, the extraordinary historic value to the work he had just undertaken, the debt that India owed him for the reproduction and reconstruction of the cave art that would otherwise have been lost, the Magistrate minimised his punishment. A different Magistrate may have had a different view, and it is one of the pivotal moments that could so easily have changed his entire life direction had he been sentenced to the harsher punishment. He was, by all accounts, a very very fortunate man, and Vava elegantly chose to gently slide over this potentially disastrous smuggling incident.
Needless to say, Sarkis missed the sailing on the 6th March, but managed to secure a place on the President Madison which sailed out of Bombay on the 19th of the month. He arrived in the port of New York on the 25th April 1941, probably a very relieved man.
Later, in 1942 Sarkis signed up for US WW2 Draft Registration, also known as the Old Man’s Draft, he was 56 years old. The application shows evidence he had already undergone an appendectomy operation, as it lists his scar. [3]
Meanwhile, Levon and his family continued about their daily lives. In August 1941 young Quarnig was noted in The Jewish Chronicle as coming third in the “Best Developed Man In India” competition. An event promoted under the All-India Standing Committee by the Zionist Institute of Physical Perfection, Calcutta to discover the most perfectly developed man and youth in India. Although because of the war, competitors were not judged in person but solely on photographic and anthropometric merits. Just a few days later his brother, Wagharsh, was on the Bishop Cotton School winning football team, beating the Lawrence Royal Military School 5-1 in Simla. Both boys immersed themselves in school life, drama was popular and each of them had a part in the school play, Pirates of Penzance with local reports giving glowing reviews. In March 1946 Wagharsh took part in the annual athletic meeting of Tata Sports Club and came 2nd overall in the individual championships; he had victories in the 100m and 200m running and was 2nd in the discus. In January 1947, representing Tata Sports Club Wagharsh took first place in the local provincial Olympic Games, winning the discus competition with a throw of 101ft 217/8 inches.
As it’s already known Sarkis Katchadourian passed away in March 1947 in Paris. The obituary in the New York Times in March of that year gives a rich visual of his extended artistic life and contribution. I speculate his widow, Vava would have contributed with facts and timelines, and the last sentence states: “he leaves a widow, the former Vava Sarian.” No mention of his alleged brother[s], nephews or niece. The question remains: was Levon a brother, related in some way or just a friend?
Meanwhile, Levon’s wife Gassia, passed away in Bombay in August of the same year. It must have been a very difficult time for Levon to come to terms with these losses so close together, yet geographically so far apart.
In 1946 Quarnig had left Bombay and travelled to the United States to study architecture in New York. In September 1947 he announced his engagement to Adrienne Halburian and they married in New Jersey in December of that year. A daughter was born a year later, but the union wasn’t to last and Quarnig and Adrienne went their separate ways, each marrying for a 2nd time in the 1960s and 70s.
Wagharsh continued to live in Bombay and in December 1948 he married for the first time to Anne Louise Smitham nee Morley at the local registry office.
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| Marriage record of Wagharsh Kachadourian and Anne Louise
Smitham in Bombay December 1948. BL N3-178-282 |
As an aircraft ground engineer for Lockheed, Wagharsh travelled extensively to the USA as part of his job and can be found on a number of re-positioning or “ferry” flights between the US and India. His wife Anne had been born in Stoke Newington, London in 1909 to publican parents, James Edward Morley and Annie nee Hiat. Anne had attended Sandal Dene School New Malden, a very small establishment. In early 1937 she had married Thomas Augustus Smitham, a newly qualified dentist. She and Thomas appear to have lived with his mother, also a dentist, in Dulwich up until May 1939. Thomas was scheduled to sail from Liverpool to Bombay, in the same month on board the “Britannia”. Although he was on the passenger manifest, his name was crossed through and he didn’t sail. As a member of the Army Dental Corps, he is likely to have been part of the medical professionals who were tasked with assessing the young men who were being conscripted to serve in readiness for WW2, this may well have been the reason for not travelling. However, his wife Anne did sail, and the no-show of Thomas on the vessel was to prove a turning point for them both.
Given that Levon was a dentist, I wonder if Anne had found work at his practice as an assistant or perhaps dental nurse of some kind. Co-incidentally, he had started to advertise for female assistants in the local Bombay Times just a month earlier. This would have brought her into contact with Wagharsh. She returned to England briefly in 1947 and lived with her parents in Sussex for a while before sailing back to India and marrying Wagharsh in December 1948 as a divorcee. How accurate that statement is, can only be speculated at. So far, I have not been able to find any reference to a divorce between Thomas and Anne Smitham. The union between Wagharsh and Anne was another short-lived marriage, and by 1954 Wagharsh had married again and his first child was born in 1955 in Karachi, named affectionately after his late mother, Gassia.
Wagharsh had applied for naturalisation in the USA in 1949 which was granted, but by 1953, he requested another naturalisation certificate be issued in his new name of Quarnig Levon Dorian.
He and his second wife, Micheline went on to have a large family finally settling down in Mexico. Wagharsh died there in 1992. His first wife, Anne continued to use her married name of Katchadourian throughout her life and in 1981, when her own mother died in Eastbourne, Sussex, Anne is recorded as executor of the will and living in South Africa. This is very likely where she died.
In 1949, Levon married for the 2nd time, in Bombay, to Eliza Alice Berberian. She was Bulgarian by birth, and prior to her marriage in India, had been naturalised as a citizen of Lebanon. [4]
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| Marriage register entry for Levon and Eliza Alice Berberian, Armenian Church Bombay |
They continued to live in Wodehouse Road, Bombay, but it must have been difficult for him with his children all now settled in the USA.
In 1958, when Levon left India for the USA, he deposited a large proportion of his immense art collection with the Art Museum in Delhi. During his lifetime in Los Angeles it became his retirement fund and from time-to-time, he would have a number of pieces shipped from India to Los Angeles to sell at auction. He is known to have held auctions in 1958, not long after his arrival, and again 1967 in LA, the latter sale was considered one of the finest auctions of arts of the Orient and India in recent times.[5]
Passionate, patriotic and pugnacious, Levon chose to live a clean, healthy lifestyle in the USA, but regularly voiced his opinion on the injustices meted out by Turkey against Armenians. He supported and join rallies and used any means possible to speak publicly at demonstrations as they happened. As an avid keep-fit senior in his 80s and 90’s, he lived simply; eating fresh fruit and vegetables, no meat, beans, plenty of olive oil and brown rice. Coupled with an astonishing, and quite frankly punishing exercise regime, he would get up before dawn, exercise in his home, listen to music, drink lemon juice to ward off germs, jog for a couple of miles, swim, ride his bicycle, do yoga – lots of yoga, then start it all over again. Journalists didn’t quite know how to handle him, his interview style was brash, impatient and distracted, mainly by his persistent daily exercise programme which he never stopped during questions. Lying on his back, holding his knees rocking side-to-side, sticking his tongue out and moving it in circles, or standing on one foot hopping up and down in place then switching to the other foot, all while the interviewer attempted to conduct a seamless conversation. They came away from him in awe, perplexed and perhaps tongue-in-cheek, wondering if he’d had a bump on the head, or, were they being cleverly manipulated and tested, given the difficulties in getting him to stay on one subject? He confused and tied them in knots but at the same time, made a lasting impression for all the right reasons.
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| Leon, aged 91 demonstrating in Los Angeles 1981 |
Asked why he was marching on the streets in November 1981
aged 91, he said:
“people lazy. They sit and watch the TV, sit in cars and buses. Sit, sit
sit! What they ought to be doing is fighting for something they believe in. Why
did I picket the Turkish ambassador to the United States for the alleged
slaughter of Armenians 65 years ago? Because I had to![6]”
Levon wrote letters endlessly on the claimed genocide and gladly spoke at length to anyone willing to listen. As he got older, so the urgency to tell his story and get people to not just listen, but hear it, became vital.
His second wife, Alice, had been in a convalescence home for some time, she passed away in 1982 in New York.
Levon, the art-loving, lesser known name-sake Katchadourian had a fire and life-long passion inside him for truth and justice. He had lived in Turkey, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Egypt, India and finally the United States. He said: “I have seen both my father and brother killed by the Turks. That seems so very long ago now – the flash of a knife, the sound of a gun – even the old rages [in me] have been mollified by time. I have seen death. I forget it. LIFE!”
Life was his benediction.
He lived to 100, passing away in August 1990 in Los Angeles.
My thanks to:
Karen de Bruyne
Kathryn Manuelian
© Liz Chater 2025
[1] Passenger manifest 1941
[2] In the 1973 Spring edition of Ararat published by AGBU. I am very grateful to Kathryn Manuelian at AGBU New York who located the issue for me via the AGBU archive
[3] U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 for Sarkis Katchadourian
[4] California, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1888-1991 for Alice Katchadourian
[5] LA Times February 1967
[6] LA Times December 1981
