Kramskoy Ivan Nikolaevich oil painting paintings Russian

4  Josephine
4  Marc
4  Meditator
4 Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy Mina Moiseev by Russia art paintings artwork oil painting Russian reproduction
4  Nikolay Nekrasov in the Period of Last Songs 
4 Portrait of a Woman
4  Portrait of a Woman dt 
4  Portrait of a Young Woman Dressed in Black Velvet
4 Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy Portrait of an Old Peasant by Russia art paintings artwork oil painting Russian reproduction
4  Portrait of Anatoly Kramskoy the Artist-s Son
4 Portrait of E. Vasilchikova
4 Portrait of Empress Maria Fyodorovna in a Head Dress Decorated with Pearls
4 Portrait of Ivan I Shishkin
4 Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy Portrait of Shishkin by Russia art paintings artwork oil painting Russian reproduction
4  Portrait of Sonya Kramskaya the Artist-s Daughter
4  Portrait of Sophia Kramskaya the Artist-s Daughter

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy
Russian Naturalist artist
born 1837 - died 1887

Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy is an outstanding representative of the democratic culture in Russia of the second half of the 19th century. Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy is known as a wonderful painter and draughtsman, a remarkable art critic and theoretician of art, a talented teacher. Besides, Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy 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, which had played an important part in the development of art in Russia.

Born into the family of a provincial state clerk, Kramskoy had no opportunity to study art during childhood. At the age of 15 Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy became an apprentice to an icon-painter, a year later a photographer took him as a retoucher. Only in 1857, Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy managed to come to St. Petersburg and enter the Academy of Arts. There Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy soon became a popular leader among the students. In 1863, Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy 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, a commune where artists shared studios and household. The young wife of Kramskoy, Sophia Nikolayevna, née Prokhorova, took care of their mutual household.- Kramskoy Ivan Nikolaevich oil painting paintings Russian- Kramskoy Ivan Nikolaevich - Russian art oil painting, art oil paintings artwork, Kramskoy Ivan Nikolaevich Bio, Russian art oil painting artwork by Kramskoy Ivan Nikolaevich.
Ivan Kramskoy is famous mainly as a portraitist; his portraits of the 60s are not large, and very often black and white, reminding of photographs. At the same period (1863-68) Kramskoy taught in The Drawing School of the Society for Promoting of the Artists; his pupils, among others, were Iliya Repin and Nicolay Yaroshenko.
Since 1869, Kramskoy started to receive regular commissions from the collector of Russian art Pavel Tretyakov. Tretyakov commissioned portraits of personalities of Russian culture and science. These portraits have become an innate part of the Russian art and social history. For Kramskoy it was a feat to preserve, for the generations to come, the likeliness of his outstanding contemporaries. Portrait of the Author Ivan Goncharov. Portrait of the Sculptor Mark Antokolsky. Portrait of Dmitry Mendeleyev.
In 1869, St. Petersburg Academy chose him an academician. The same year Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy made his first trip abroad: Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy visited Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Düsseldorf, Antwerp, Paris, and Vienna, where Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy studied famous art collections. After his return to Russia Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy started organizing the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling Exhibitions. The aim of the Society was:
1) to give the opportunity to everybody in Russia to get acquainted with its contemporary art;
2) to develop love for art in Russian society;
3) to make selling their works easier for the artists.
In 1872 Kramskoy painted his masterpiece Christ in the Desert, a traditional topic, yet, in Kramskoy’s work it acquired new social interpretation and deep philosophical meaning. Christ in the Desert carried the idea of man’s moral duty to society and therefore it greatly impressed the painter’s contemporaries, who found a definite affinity to their attitudes and feelings in it in the crucial period of Russian history, which demanded personal heroism and sacrifice for the sake of people. “The best Christ I ever saw”– Leo Tolstoy.

The titles of oil painting old master Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy