Russian Lacquered Box - After Ivan Kramskoy (1837-1887) "Portrait of a Woman." Original image from 1883, lovingly reproduced on the top of the hinged cover. Regal red interior. Signed and dated indistinctly below image. 1966. 

Size: 4 1/2 x 6 x 2 3/4 In. 

#6 #6044 . 

Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy was born in 1837 in Ostrogozhsk in the Russian Empire. He came from an impoverished petit-bourgeois family. From 1857 to 1863 he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts; he reacted against academic art and was an initiator of the “Revolt of the Fourteen” which ended with the expulsion from the Academy of a group of students who organized the Artel of Artists. Influenced by the ideas of the Russian revolutionary democrats, Kramskoy 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 (or Peredvizhniki). For five years, starting in 1863, he taught at several drawing schools, promoting the society and the arts. Starting in the 1870s he created a gallery of portraits of important Russian writers, scientists, artists, and public figures that became extremely popular, including Tolstoy, Shishkin, Tretyakov, and Botkin. He argued that expressive simplicity of composition and clarity of depiction emphasized profound psychological elements of character, and other artists adopted his style to convey more emotion in their subjects. His most common portraits, however, were of common peasants, which were less successful in his lifetime but became highly appreciated in the 20th Century. Kramskoy was considered an eccentric for giving his works to customers in expensive frames and not charging money for it. Tragically, he died from an aortic aneurysm while working at his easel in 1887, just forty-nine years old.