The son of the former dealer, decorator of the Imperial theatres, a pupil of Repin, married, formerly. member ray Petrograd Religious-Philosophical society and "WOLFIE". According to the beliefs of members of society was a monarchist.
From the book Likhachev D. S. "Memories":
To forgive could not imagine that we conceded in the thirteenth quarantine Roth Pavel Fomich Smotritsky. He was a wonderful artist from the circle "World of art", member of the Russian-Finnish art exhibition each architect Olga, who built the cottage by Leonid Andreyev on the Black river. His small fame as an artist, I think, due to his exceptional modesty, some kind of psychological obscurity. He didn't pay attention neither appearance nor manner to behave, nor always a calm and quiet speech.
After the essential period of stay in the thirteenth company of him as a patient, sent to anzere, where he found work as an artist in the camp scatoloni workshop. This workshop was the establishment of remarkable. There were good carpenters cabinetmakers of the prisoners, who mostly boxes of the icons. Icons they were given from the Museum's storerooms, which were in charge of N. N. Vinogradov. They were the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but I suspect the abundance and production, and it went and icons of the XVII century, which was then considered not worthy of attention. What "then"! Back in the 40s (presumably at the end of the war), one doctor of arts in the city of Gorky was allowed to release under the hospital Church, which was a warehouse of icons XVII—XVIII centuries. And all the icons were just burned.
Tree icons was dry, nice (told me that was even the cypress boards), joiners are still, and poor Pavel Fomich, a believer and understanding in the icons, was forced these boxes to paint. I, however, these products, radiating in Moscow, had never seen.
Write Pavel Fomichev with Anzère was harder than the rescue of the thirteenth company, but still did it, and in the spring of 1930 he began to participate in our conversations in Crimea, bringing with them wonderful watercolors. I remember a series of his bushes under the snow. Some of the bushes were upgraded to schedule to be printed and published in the magazine "the Solovetsky Islands". Down in the area right in them, as I recall, was in the circle of his initials.
Pavel Fomich never talked long, but all of his comments and answers were very thin and "place". I remember such a conversation. I told him about my observation: the writers of the late XIX and early XX centuries to invent a special garment. The first was a special dress Tolstoy (by the way, we then went to hoodies — the garment that did not require not only fresh to the collar, but sometimes underwear), then a special garments were invented himself Stasov, Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreev, Blok, Voloshin, White, Maverick, etc., etc. were invented himself naked, in our view, only Chekhov. Pavel Fomichev thought and said: "Yes, he dressed like a typical doctor." I remember my childhood when often was ill, I had a visit by children's doctors and took me to the doctors. Chekhov, of course, was "doctor's identity" in clothing. Pavel Fomich was absolutely right. This subtle remark of Paul Fomich remembered all my life.
