Ivan Kramskoi

Ivan Kramskoi was a Russian painter and draughtsman, a remarkable art critic and theoretician of art, a talented teacher, one of intellectual leaders of the Russian democratic art movement in 1860-1880.  Influenced by the ideas of the Russian revolutionary democrats, Kramskoi asserted the high public duty of the artist, principles of realism, and the moral substance and nationality of art. He became one of the main founders and ideologists of the Company of Itinerant Art Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki). Kramskoi created a gallery of portraits of important Russian writers, scientists, artists and public figures in which expressive simplicity of composition and clarity of depiction emphasize profound psychological elements of character. Kramskoi's democratic ideals found their brightest expression in his portraits of peasants, which portrayed a wealth of character-details in representatives of the common people.