Ivan Kramskoy

 Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy (June 8, 1837, – April 6, 1887) is an outstanding representative of the democratic culture in Russia of the second half of the 19th century. He is known as a wonderful painter, a remarkable art critic and a talented teacher. Besides, he was an originator and ardent inspirer of the first independent artistic organizations, namely the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling Exhibitions and St. Petersburg Team of Artists (Peredvizhniki or Wanderers, 1860-1880), which had played an important part in the development of art in Russia.

Born in Ostrogozhsk into the family of a provincial state clerk, Kramskoy had no opportunity to study art during childhood. Only in 1857, he managed to come to St. Petersburg and enter the Academy of Arts. There he soon became a popular leader among the students. In 1863, he was among the 14 best graduates who refused to fulfill the diploma work on a given mythological theme. All 14 were dismissed from the Academy, and Kramskoy headed the St. Petersburg Team of Artists.

Ivan Kramskoy is famous mainly as a portraitist; his portraits of the 60s are not large, and very often monochrome, reminding of photographs. Since 1869, Kramskoy started to receive regular commissions from the collector of Russian art Pavel Tretyakov, who commissioned portraits of personalities of Russian culture and science. For Kramskoy it was a feat to preserve, for the generations to come, the likeliness of his outstanding contemporaries.

Portrait of Empress Maria Feodorovna, 1882

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy, 1873

Kramskoy always understood the capturing charm of color, admired Alexander Ivanov, his younger contemporaries – Repin, Vaseline, Polenov, French Impressionists. Aspiring to expand the ideological expressiveness of his images, Kramskoi created art that existed on the cusp of portraiture and genre-painting.

Christ in the Desert, 1872

Unknown Woman, 1883

These paintings disclose their subjects' complex and sincere emotions, their personalities and fates. Moreover, they embody the high moral and social ideals of his time. For him, artistic truth and beauty, moral and aesthetic values were inseparable. His works greatly influenced his contemporaries’ ideology. Today they still affect people because the artist’s attitude to life was based on love and respect of man, on his belief in truth and justice.