Moscow 1830-1897 Moscow

After ten years of study (beginning in 1844) with K. I. Rabus at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, Aleksei Kondratievich Savrasov achieved the rank of member of the Academy in 1854. Although based in Moscow, Savrasov traveled frequently, taking trips to England, France, Germany, and Switzerland in 1862, to Paris in 1867, and to the Volga River and to the Ukraine several times between 1870 and 1875. He organized and headed (1857-1882) a landscape painting class at the Moscow School, where his followers included K.A. Korovin and I.I. Levitan. From 1861 Savrasov held membership in the Moscow Society of Art Lovers, and in 1870 he became a founding member of the Circle of the Itinerants. In addition to these groups, the artist participated in numerous exhibitions held at the Academy of Arts, in international exhibitions in Vienna (1873) and Paris (1878), and in 1882 the All Russian exhibition in Moscow, among others. Savrasov, an accomplished draftsman and landscape painter, is considered the originator of the lyrical landscape in late nineteenth-century Russian realist painting.

"Beginning with Savrasov, there was a lyricism in landscape painting as well as an endless love for One's own country..." (Levitan).