Saveli Sorin studied at the Odessa Drawing School under Kyriak Kostandi and at the Academy of Arts under I.I. Tvorozhnikov, V. E. Savinsky and Ilya Repin from 1899. 

Saveli Sorin soon gained fame as an outstanding portraitist and got lots of orders.
 

From 1907 he travelled abroad. The artist was an exhibitor of the World of Art, and New Society of Artists. In the 1900s – 1910s Saveli Sorin painted portrait of cultural figures, such as Fyodor Shalyapin, Maxim Gorky, Anna Akhmatova, Tatyana Karsavina, and others. From 1920 he lived in Paris and often travelled to the USA. His portraits were extremely fashionable in the highest quarters of the American society. 
 

Following the artist’s will, his widow donated about twenty of his works to Soviet museums.