Pavel Trubetskoy (Italian – Paolo Troubetzkoy) was a Russian sculptor and painter, worked in Italy, the US, Britain, Russia and France. His work was highly appreciated by famous sculptors, artists and writers of the time. His good friend well-known Russian writer Leo Tolstoy called him primitive and extraordinarily talented.
As early as 1863 the father of the famous sculptor Prince Peter Trubetskoy was sent as a diplomat to Florence by the order of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There he met his love and future wife singer Ada Vinans, who came from the USA to Italy to take singing lessons and develop her musical abilities. Despite the fact that he was already married to a Russian girl, Peter lived with Ada. To tell the truth, he could divorce his first wife only in 1870. When the information reached the royal court, Alexander II became very angry, forbidding Trubetskoy to return to his homeland.
At that time, Peter and Ada lived in the north of Italy in Intra under the name Stahl. There their three sons were born. Paolo was born on February 15, 1866.
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Fedor Tolstoy (1783 – 1873) was a Russian sculptor, painter, printmaker, and medal-designer. To tell the truth, he is one of the most influential figures in Russian Art. Unfortunately, there is much less information about him than, for example, about Repin, Shishkin or Vrubel.
Count Fedor Petrovich Tolstoy was born in St. Petersburg. The father of the future artist directed the military department to provide the army with uniforms and food. The boy’s parents were eager to see their son among the officers. However, the first education little Count Tolstoy received in the Polotsk Jesuit College, where he studied languages, theology and art.
Soon the count entered the Naval Corps. As a cadet, Fedor attended the Academy of Arts as a free listener. The dream of becoming a professional artist was so strong that Fedor Petrovich decided to leave military service forever. Despite of the discontent of relatives and the opinion of others, he resigned and fully devoted himself to art. Those were years of hardship, but not for a single moment the twenty-year-old listener of the Academy of Arts did not regret his decision. He mastered the skill of the sculptor, and made sketches of plaster models under the guidance of his friend Orest Kiprensky.
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Fedot Shubin was the great Russian sculptor, one of the great masters of world art. You know, he studied not only in Russia, but also in France and Italy.
The boy was born in May 1740 into a peasant family. His father Arkhangelsk Pomor Ivan Afanasyevich had slightly different surname – Shubnoy. He was not serf, could read and write, and was fond of bone carving. It was thanks to his lessons that Fedot decided to become a sculptor. To tell the truth, his father taught young Mikhail Lomonosov.
In 1759, Ivan Afanasievich Shubnoy died, and his young son went to the capital. For two years the young man studied Petersburg, he did not live in poverty, as he easily carved fans, snuffboxes, combs and other trinkets. Lomonosov was happy to patronize the son of his first teacher, and in 1761 Fedot entered the Academy of Arts. The boy was very talented. Even Count Shuvalov was amazed by his first works and also willingly patronized him.
In 1766, he made a bas-relief The Murder of Askold and Dir, which not only was awarded the Great Gold Medal, but the author also received a personal nobility and the first officer’s rank. Unfortunately, many of his works were lost.
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Nikolai Yaroshenko was a Russian painter and portraitist, active participant of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions.
The future artist was born in December 1846 in Poltava into the family of a Russian officer, who later became a general. In 1855 the boy entered the Poltava Cadet Corps. Along with the daily military training, Nikolai was engaged in painting. Two years later, Yaroshenko was transferred to the First Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg. At the age of 14 Yaroshenko began to study in the studio of the artist Adrian Markovich Volkov.
Having graduated from the Cadet Corps Nikolai entered the Pavlov Military School and began attending evening classes at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. Ivan Kramskoy became his teacher.
In 1867 Yaroshenko entered the Artillery Academy, at the same time he began attending classes of the Academy of Arts as a free listener. Then he served in the St. Petersburg cartridge factory.
In the early 1870s, the first portraits of the artist The Old Man with the Snuffbox, Peasant, Old Jew appeared. Yarosheko became a frequent guest at the drawing evenings of Ivan Kramskoy and Pavel Bryullov.
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Silvestr Shchedrin stood at the origins of the Russian romantic landscape. Despite the fact that his life was short, he left behind a lot of wonderful works. The most famous cycle of the artist is The New Rome. Castle of the Holy Angel. Thanks to his works, the landscape in Russia became an independent genre.
Biography of the artist was mainly connected with Italy, where he created his best paintings. In Russia he spent only his youth. Despite the years spent abroad, the artist always felt like a Russian person and was interested in the fate of his homeland. He was born in February 1791 into the family of the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts, Feodosiy Fedorovich Shchedrin. His uncle, Semyon Fedorovich, was a professor at the Academy.
At the age of 9 Shchedrin became a pupil at the Academy. When it was time to choose a specialization, he entered the class of his uncle, specializing in sentimental landscapes. But Semyon Fedorovich unexpectedly died, and the young man chose Professor Mikhail Ivanov. In 1808 the student received a small silver medal. The following year, he was awarded a small gold medal for his success in painting. And in 1812 Shchedrin received a large gold medal for the picture View From The Petrovsky Island.
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The nineteenth century is called the Golden Age for Russian literature and the period of the formation of art criticism, the founder and most vivid representative of which is Vissarion Belinsky. The world significance of this person is measured by the quality of his ideas. According to contemporaries, Belinsky, a critic and a Western philosopher, has outgrown the level of bourgeois thought of the time. He established a symbiotic relationship between the writer and the critic whose creative interaction he considered a tool of societal self-exploration.
The influence of this publicist and writer on Russian literature is felt until now. Vissarion first established the correct concepts of prose and poetry in general. It was he who pointed out the direction in which literature was to go to become a social force and a teacher for the younger generation.
Theoretical positions that he developed, have become common property. New literary generations are still based on his relentless search for truth, as well as on the views on the importance of literature in life.
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Andrei Ryabushkin is a great Russian artist, who worked in the genre of historical and genre painting. His paintings mostly describe the Moscow way of life of the 17th century.
The boy was born on October 17, 1861 in the village of Stanichnaya Sloboda, Tambov Gubernia. Since childhood Andrei loved art. His father and brother were engaged in iconography and the boy helped them. From time to time Andrei painted icons and just made drawings. When the future great artist was orphaned at the age of 14, A. Preobrazhensky noted his talent in fine art. To tell the truth, Preobrazhensky gave him that very ticket to life and took him to Moscow.
Soon after that, Ryabushkin went to Petersburg in order to enter the Academy of Arts. It was quite easy thanks to his abilities. His diploma work was on a religious theme The Removal from the Cross (1890).
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