Curated playlist
19th-century painters from the Russian Empire
- Dmitry LevitzkyCatherine II hired painter Dmitry Levitzky to portray girls of the Smolny Institute dancing and acting.
- Ivan ArgunovIvan Argunov, born a serf in 1729, helped found Russian portrait painting. He served one noble family all his life.
- Alexander Andreyevich IvanovAlexander Ivanov spent twenty years in Rome painting one enormous canvas. He finished it in 1857, a year before he died.
- Ilya RepinIlya Repin painted the composer Mussorgsky four days before he died. Repin then sold the portrait to pay for a monument.
- Kazimir MalevichIn 1915, Kazimir Malevich hung a black square where Russian homes kept their icons.
- Karl BryullovOne huge painting of Pompeii's destruction made Karl Bryullov famous across Europe.
- Natalia GoncharovaNatalia Goncharova walked Moscow's streets with painted cheeks, handing out a manifesto.
- Mikhail VrubelMikhail Vrubel stepped off a train in 1884 dressed like a Venetian from a painting.
- Vladimir BorovikovskyVladimir Borovikovsky changed his Cossack surname to sound more aristocratic.
- Ivan AivazovskyIvan Aivazovsky threw his Ottoman medals into the sea. He was responding to the massacres of Armenians in the 1890s.