Nikolay Makovsky

Biography

In 1865 Nikolay Makovsky, a student in the architecture department of the Academy of Arts, received a small silver medal for a design for a stone village church for a hundred and fifty parishioners. A year later he completed the course with the title of unclassed (free) artist and the right to erect buildings, and took a post as an architect’s assistant at the Ministry of the Imperial Court. He did not stay there long: he soon abandoned architecture and took up painting.

He was born on 28 April (10 May) 1841 in Moscow. His father, Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky, was a bookkeeper by profession, but he drew as an amateur, collected art and became one of the founders of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Four of his children grew up to be artists: the elder ones, Alexandra and Konstantin, then Nikolay, and the youngest, Vladimir. Nikolay studied at the Moscow Palace School of Architecture in 1853–1859, and in 1859 entered the Academy in St Petersburg, in the architecture department.

In 1870, together with other artists, he signed the charter of the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions and so became one of its founders. His relations with the Association were uneven. As early as 1872 he was expelled for not taking part in its exhibitions; from 1875 he exhibited again as a non-member exhibitor, and he became a member only in 1879. Why this happened is not known.

Meanwhile the Academy kept raising his rank. In 1872, for “View of the Church in the Village of Dyakovo, Moscow Governorate”, he became a class artist of the third degree, and a year later, for “View of Moscow”, he received the second. In 1873–1874 he travelled to Egypt with his brother Konstantin, journeyed widely through Russia and Little Russia, and spent several months in Paris among Russian artists, working there under the guidance of Alexey Bogolyubov.

Almost everything he painted was shown at the travelling exhibitions. His best works are usually said to be “A Street in Cairo”, “Nizhny Novgorod”, which is in the Tretyakov Gallery, and “A Fair in Little Russia”. To my mind, the former architect shows clearly in this list: almost everywhere he paints views, streets, towns.

Nikolay Makovsky died in St Petersburg on 6 (18) October 1886, in the forty-sixth year of his life. In 2008–2009 his works were shown at the Russian Museum in the exhibition “The Makovsky Artists”, devoted to the whole family.