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Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy

Born: Novaya Sot, Voronezh Province, 8 June 1837
Died: St Petersburg, 6 April 1887
Nationality: Russian
Background: 

lower-middle-class provincial family; early work as a copyist clerk

Studies: 

Imperial Academy of Arts (1857-63, St Petersburg)

Career: 

1863 - organizes protest against the mythological themes required for admittance to the Imperial Academy; begins teaching at the Schools of Drawing run by the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts

1870s-80s –Pavel Tretyakov commissions portraits of literary and artistic figures including Lev Tolstoy (1873, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow); also paints peasant portraits

1888 – publication of V. Stasov, ed., Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy: His Life, Correspondence and Art Critical Essays

Commissions from: 

Pavel Tretyakov

Important Artworks: 

Self-Portrait, 1867 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

Christ in the Wilderness, 1872 (Tretyakov Gallery)

Nekrasov at the Time of his Last Poems, 1877-78 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

Kramskoy Painting a Portrait of His Daughter, 1884 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

 

See also Ilya Repin ’s 1882 portrait of Kramskoy (Tretyakov Gallery)