Pavel Chistyakov

Pavel Chistyakov

Portrait of Pavel Chistyakov by Valentin Serov, 1881

Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov (Russian: Па́вел Петро́вич Чистяко́в; 5 July [O.S. 23 June] 1832 – 11 November 1919) was a Russian painter and teacher of art.

Biography

He studied at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1849–1861) under Pyotr Basin. He was a pensioner of the Academy of Arts in Paris and in Rome (1862–1870). He taught in the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1860–1864), and in Saint Petersburg (from 1872) he was the professor-head of workshop (1908–1910) and managing mosaic branch (1890–1912). The art-pedagogical system of Chistyakov, whose students included Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily Polenov, Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, and Vasily Surikov, developed in constant struggle against the inert system of academism and played a huge role in the development of realism in Russian art of the second half of the 19th century.

The main goal of Chistyakov was the preparation of the artist-citizen possessing high professional skill. His pedagogical method assumed the merger of the direct perception of nature by the artist with its scientific study. In creative practice he aspired to dramatization of a historical plot and psychological saturation in historical and genre portraits (Head of a Ciucciara [Italian girl], 1864, in the Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg; Boyar, 1876, in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow).

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