Background
His father was a surveyor for the local government.
His father was a surveyor for the local government.
He began his art studies with the well-known Ukrainian pedagogue and artist, Dmitri Bezperchy. After 1885, he lived in Saint St. Petersburg, where he took private lessons from Ilya Repin. From 1886 to 1887, he was an occasional student at the Imperial Academy of Arts and worked with Professor Pavel Chistyakov.
In 1902, he moved to Moscow and served as a teacher at the Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry until 1912.
He resigned from the Peredvizhniki in 1903 and, together with Apollinary Vasnetsov, Abram Arkhipov, Alexei Stepanov, Ilya Ostroukhov and others, became one of the founders of the "Union of Russian Artists", which existed until 1923. He also worked as an illustrator for periodicals such as the Ежегодник императорских театров (Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters), Живописное обозрение стран света (Pictorial View of the World) and Всемирная иллюстрация (Worldwide Illustration).
In 1910, his photographs earned him a membership in the "Русское фотографическое обществорация" (Russian Photographic Society).
That same year, he became a member of the Peredvizhniki and later had several paintings purchased by Pavel Tretyakov.