"Bringing the Museum to You"

The Cyber Art Show continues our study of Russian landscape painters in the Public Domain with the second of two 10-piece Exhibitions of works by Aleksei Stepanovich Stepanov (1858-1923).
 

Born in Moscow, Aleksei was born into a family of hereditary nobility. His mother died in 1858. His father, an officer during the Crimean War, died in 1863. Alexei was sent to an orphanage for senior officer’s sons in Moscow, located in the former palace of Count Razoumovsky. He continued his secondary education at the high school before attending the Constantine Institute in Moscow, where he graduated in 1879.

 

From 1880 to 1884 Stepanov studied with Illarion M. Prianishnikov and Evgraf Sorokin. In academic exhibitions he was awarded a small silver medal in 1883 and a large silver medal in 1884.

 

He began working as an illustrator for the Nature and Hunting journal, composing more than a hundred illustrations from 1883 to 1895.

 

Stepanov became a professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, where he taught from from 1899 to 1918. Among his pupils were Sergei Gerasimov (1885-1964); Vsevolod Filippov; Matvei Dobrov; Boris Johanson (1893-1973), Pavel Korin (1892-1967); Alexander Pamphilov; Turzhansky Leonard (1875-1945) and Boris Yakovlev.

 

He became a member of the Peredvizhniki (Society of Wandering Art Exhibitions) from 1891 to 1903, as well as a founding member of the Union of Russian Artists.

 

From roughly 1900 to 1920 Alexei developed his style of plein-air painting, constructing in soft, velvety tonal combinations characterized by a poetic perception of nature and folk life and by the successful integration of landscape and genre scenes with animal themes.

 

He spent his summers from 1906 to 1914 in the areas of Lioubenkino, Garoussovo and Berejok located in Vychni Volotchek near Tver.

 

Stepanov fell seriously ill in 1920, but continued to work. One of his last works, The Swing (1923) is now part of the collection of the Carnegie Institution.

 

He died in Moscow in 1923 and is buried in the cemetery Vagankovo ​​in Moscow.