Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy

Ivan Kramskoi was the leading Russian portrait painter of his generation, known for faces that reveal thought and character. His portraits are quiet and direct, often set against plain dark backgrounds, and his studies of peasants are painted with the same seriousness as his portraits of writers and aristocrats.

Born in Ostrogozhsk in southern Russia, he studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. In 1863 he led the Revolt of the Fourteen, when a group of students walked out rather than paint a set academic subject. He then co-founded the Peredvizhniki, the Wanderers, who took realist art to audiences across Russia. His best known works, Christ in the Desert (1872) and Unknown Woman (1883), are in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

In Girl with a Tress and his heads of old peasants, notice how the light falls on the face and leaves everything else in shadow.