Ostrogozhsk, Voronezh Oblast 1837-1887 Petersburg.

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi attended the Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1857 to 1863, but he left before graduation as one of the artists in the "Rebellion of the Fourteen" who protested against the stagnant rules governing competitions at the Academy. After his departure, Kramskoi supported the creation of the Petersburg Artel of Artists, and he subsequently became its leader, He was also a founding member and an active participant in the Circle of the Itinerants, acting as the group's moral conscience and ideological inspiration. In 1869 Kramskoi received the title of a member of the Academy and afterwards enjoyed tremendous authority and influence among Russian artists. An outstanding portraitist and a prominent figure in Russian realist painting, Kramskoi more over wrote art reviews in Petersburg, which today form a rich legacy on aesthetic issues and the history of Russian art.

"It is very likely that, were there no Kramskoi, there would not have been the ['Rebellion of the Fourteen'] on September 9, 1863, nor would there have been the manifestation of the new directions, nor, perhaps the very style since the talented young artists who were scattered and lacked firm convictions and a program would have dispersed and gone by unnoticed, and would have remained without influence, being constantly pressed and pursued by academism and every form of banality. Kramskoi's intellect and energy merged them all into a whole, giving their intentions a common, definite purpose..." (A.N. Benois, 1902).