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Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy is an outstanding representative of the democratic culture in Russia of the second half of the 19th century. He is known as a wonderful painter and draughtsman, a remarkable art critic and theoretician of art, a talented teacher. Besides, he was an originator and ardent inspirer of the first independent artistic organizations, namely the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling Exhibitions and St. Petersburg Team of Artists, which had played an important part in the development of art in Russia.
Born into the family of a provincial state clerk, Kramskoy had no opportunity to study art during childhood. At the age of 15 he became an apprentice to an icon-painter, a year later a photographer took him as a retoucher. Only in 1857, he managed to come to St. Petersburg and enter the Academy of Arts. There he soon became a popular leader among the students. In 1863, he was among the 14 best graduates who refused to fulfill the diploma work on a given mythological theme. All 14 were dismissed from the Academy, and Kramskoy headed the St. Petersburg Team of Artists, a commune where artists shared studios and household. The young wife of Kramskoy, Sophia Nikolayevna, née Prokhorova, took care of their mutual household.