Career
Along with several other young painters, he challenged the spirit of academism that was prevalent at the Academy and in 1863 left it to become a freelance painter, joining the Peredvizhniki movement in 1876. In 1868, Litovchenko was recognized as an academician for his picture of a falconeer serving at the court of Tsar Alexis (one of his several versions of the subject). Among his larger paintings, Ivan the Terrible Showing His Treasures to Jerome Horsey (1875) was purchased by the Tsar for the Alexander III Museum in Saint St. Petersburg, and Tsar Alexis and Archbishop Nikon Venerating the Relics of Patriarch Philip (1886) was acquired by Pavel Tretyakov for his collection in Moscow (as were the finest of his portraits).
Litovchenko is also remembered as the author of seven murals in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow and a set of icons for the Crimean War memorial in Sevastopol.