Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy

Portrait of a woman

Portrait of the writer Leo Tolstoy

Girl with a tress

Christ in the desert - Tretyakov Gallery

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi (1837 – 1887) was a Russian painter and art critic. He was the intellectual leader of the Russian democratic art movement in 1860-1880.

Kramskoi came from a poor petty-bourgeois family. From 1857 to 1863 he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts; he reacted against academic art, and he was an initiator of the "revolt of fourteen" which ended with an expulsion from the Academy of arts of its graduates.

Under the influence of ideas of the Russian revolutionary democrats Kramskoi asserted representation about a high public duty of artist, principles of realism, moral substance and a nationality of art. He created gallery of portraits of the largest Russian writers, scientific, artists and public figures in which expressive simplicity of a composition, clearness of figure emphasize the leading part of the profound psychological characteristic. Democratic sights of Kramskoi found the brightest expression in portraits of the peasants who reflected sincere riches and internal advantage of the person from people.

Kramskoi treated a religious plot in moral–philosophical plan. He gave the Christ dramatic experiences deeply psychological vital interpretation, idea of heroic self-sacrifice. One of Kramskoi’s most well known paintings is Christ in the Desert (1872, Tretyakov gallery).

Self-portrait