Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi – a Russian painter and graphic artist, an exponent of critical realism, and one of the most significant St. Petersburg artists of the post-reform era, an art publicist and educator. Ivan Kramskoi was born into a clerk's family. He developed an early interest in drawing and at the age of fifteen became an apprentice to an icon painter. After finishing school he became a clerk in the local municipal council. In 1853 he began retouching photographs. In 1856 Kramskoi moved to Saint Petersburg, where he worked as a retoucher in the atelier of Ivan Aleksandrovsky. In 1857 he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he studied under Alexei Markov, professor of historical painting.
In 1863 Kramskoi received a small gold medal for the painting "Moses Brings Forth Water from the Rock." He later left the Academy with the aim of creating a modern association of artists. This led to the founding of the Petersburg Artel of Artists, which existed from 1863 to 1871. In 1865 Kramskoi was invited as an assistant to paint the dome of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Due to Markov's illness he completed the majority of the decoration together with other artists.
From 1863 to 1868 Kramskoi taught at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. In 1869 he was awarded the title of Academician. In 1870 Kramskoi became one of the founders and an ideologue of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki). Kramskoi became renowned as a talented portrait painter. He produced a number of portraits of outstanding Russian figures, including Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Shishkin, Pavel Tretyakov, and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. In his later years Kramskoi suffered from a heart aneurysm. He died on April 5, 1887 while working on a portrait of Dr. Rauchfuss.
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