Vladimir Makovsky

Vladimir Makovsky painted scenes of everyday Russian life with humour, irony and a sharp eye for character. His pictures of clerks, peasants, city crowds and families are full of telling gestures and facial expressions, and they often poke fun at pretension or show the gap between rich and poor.

Born in Moscow into an artistic family, he was the son of one of the founders of the Moscow art school, and his brothers Konstantin and Nikolai and sister Alexandra were also painters. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and was a founding member of the Peredvizhniki, the Wanderers, in 1870. He later taught at the Moscow school and at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg.

His best known painting, The Collapse of the Bank (1881), here as Bank Crash, shows ruined depositors crowding a bank office. In Dinner and Don’t Go, look at how much story he tells through small details.