Ivan Kramskoy: A collection of 149 paintings (HD)

Ivan Kramskoy: A collection of 149 paintings (HD) Description: One of the best portrait artists in Russia, and one of the leading contributors to Russian Painting in the 19th-Century, Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy (Kramskoi) painted many of the most important celebrities of his generation. Highly prolific, an expert draughtsman and painter, he is associated with the Realist and Humanist movements. One of several great Russian artists of the pre-Revolutionary era, his contemporaries included Nikolai Gay (1831-94), Vasily Petrov (1834-82), Nikolai Yaroshenko (1846-98), and Ilya Repin (1844-1930). Kramskoy was a prominent figure in a minor revolt by some of Russia’s most talented art students against the conservatism of the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1863, which led to the formation of the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions, whose members (known as peredvizhniki, itinerants, or wanderers) travelled around Russia preaching political reform and holding art exhibitions of works completed en route. Kramskoy’s most famous paintings include Portrait of Leo Tolstoy (1873), Christ in the Wilderness (1872) and Portrait of an Unknown Woman (1883), all in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Feel free to subscribe!