Alexander Beggrov

Biography

In 1868 the frigate Alexander Nevsky, returning to Russia, was wrecked off the coast of Denmark and sank. Among those saved was a young officer, Alexander Beggrov, and it was from his sketches and drawings that the marine painter Alexey Bogolyubov, artist of the Naval General Staff, painted two pictures of the frigate’s loss. So began an acquaintance that determined the rest of his life.

Beggrov was born on 29 December 1841 (17 December, Old Style) in Saint Petersburg, into the family of Karl Beggrov, a watercolourist and lithographer and an academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts; the family was of German origin. His father did not prepare him for an artist’s career. From 1853 to 1863 Alexander studied at the Nikolayev Engineering School and the Naval Engineering and Artillery School, and on graduating in 1863 as an ensign in the Corps of Engineer-Mechanics he entered the Baltic Fleet. He sailed on the frigates Oslyabya and Alexander Nevsky. His early pictures, according to what is known of him, were painted under the influence of the French marine painter Louis Isabey. Until 1870 he ran the drafting workshop at the Admiralty. In 1870, now with Bogolyubov’s support, he entered the Academy of Arts as an unregistered student and attended the landscape class of Mikhail Clodt. His studies went alongside his service: in 1871–1872, as an officer of the screw frigate Svetlana, he accompanied Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich on a voyage around the world. In 1873 the Academy awarded a small silver medal for three of his pictures: “View of the Town of Canea in Candia”, “The Imperial Yacht Derzhava” and “The Steamship Grand Duke Konstantin”. That same year he showed work at the World’s Fair in Vienna.

In 1874 Beggrov retired from the navy and went to Paris, where he studied with Léon Bonnat and with Bogolyubov, who had moved to France a year earlier. There he met Russian artists, among them Ilya Repin and Konstantin Savitsky. From 1874 he took part in the exhibitions of the Wanderers (the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions, a group of realist painters who showed their work across Russia), and in 1876 he became a full member. The date of his joining is given differently: 1876 in some accounts and 1878 in others, and I take 1876 as the more fully described.

His father’s death in 1875 brought him back to Russia. In 1878 he was appointed artist of the Naval Ministry and held the post for the rest of his life. That year, at the Paris World’s Fair, his painting “View of the Neva and the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island with the Stock Exchange” was awarded the top prize. A year later he sailed on the Svetlana from Kronstadt round Europe to Greece, and then lived and worked in France for about two years. He showed work in Paris again in 1900. In 1885 Beggrov became one of the founders of the Society of Russian Watercolourists. He was made an academician of the Academy of Arts in 1899, and in 1912 the Academy’s council elected him an honorary member. In that same year, 1912, he gave the Academy 63,900 roubles to help “poor artists, their widows and orphans”.

From 1892 he lived in Gatchina, where he built a house and laid out a small garden. After his wife’s death in 1903 he rented an apartment on Sobornaya Street, and from 1906 he did not leave Gatchina. For the last year and a half of his life, because of illness, he could not paint.

Beggrov died in Gatchina in the night of 14 to 15 April (27–28 April) 1914. He was buried on 17 April, Old Style, in the Lutheran section of the Gatchina town cemetery, beside his wife, Lucia.