Among the Peredvizhniki (organisers of mobile exhibitions) (The Peredvizhniki is discussed in detail in article about I.N. Kramskoi) who devoted their talent to the ‘muse of wrath and sorrow’, a special place was occupied by Vasily Perov.
Orest Kiprensky, the great portraitist of the early nineteenth century, was born in the Ora-nienbaum district of Petersburg Gubernia, on an estate belonging to the landowner A. S. Diakonov. The future artist was entered in the register of Koporye church as the illegitimate son of the peasant girl Anna Gavrilova, who a year after the …
Silvestr Shchedrin, the greatest Russian landscape-painter of the early nineteenth century, was the most striking exponent of the realist aspirations of the time.
One of the founders of the Russian genre painting, Alexei Venetsianov, was born into a not particularly well-off merchant family in Moscow. His father traded in fruit-bushes. There is evidence that he also dealt in pictures, and this may have helped awaken the young Venetsianov’s interest in art. The future artist had his first lessons …
Stepan Pimenov, one of the great Russian sculptors of the early nineteenth century, was born the son of a humble St. Petersburg customs official. Having discovered in him the makings of an artist, his parents sent him at the age of eleven to the Academy of Arts, where he soon distinguished himself by his exceptional …
Vasily Demut-Malinovsky occupies one of the leading places among the masters of Russian monumental sculpture of the first half of 19th century. His works echoed the heroic epoch of the 1812 War and were close to the thoughts and feelings of the Russian people. He was born the son of a wood-carver, in St. Petersburg. …
Fyodor Tolstoy, one of the most interesting and original artists of the first half of last century, was born in St. Petersburg into the family of the head of the War Commissariat, and—as was customary then—was immediately registered as sergeant to the Preobrazhensky regiment. His parents, who envisaged their son becoming a military man, sent …
The Great Karl, he was called by his contemporaries. His masterpiece, The Last Day of Pompeii, an enormous composition painted in Italy in 1830—1833, was a real triumph. Italian critics compared Bryullov to the greatest artists of the past, such as Rubens, Rembrandt, and Van Dyke. At the age of thirty three, Bryullov gained European …
The work of Ivan Aivazovsky, who won worldwide fame in his own lifetime, can be regarded as a single epic poem of the sea, remarkably integrated in its perception of the world. A retrospective view of his work was given by the Soviet artist Martiros Sarian: ‘His art is the affirmation of man and humanity …
The artist, thinker and theorist Alexander Ivanov, in the words of the writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky, ‘belonged in his aspirations to that small elite of geniuses who are decidedly people of the future’. Alexander Ivanov was born in St. Petersburg. His father Andrei Ivanov, was a professor of historical painting. In 1817 Alexander joined the Academy …