Mikhail Wylie

Painter, graphic artist, bibliophile. Great-nephew of Scottish surgeon Sir James Wylie (1768–1854), personal physician of Russian emperors Paul I, Alexander I and Nicholas I and founder of the Military Medical Academy in St Petersburg (1798). Born in St Petersburg (1838) in the family of Scottish doctor James Wylie (1794–1850) and Vera von Rühl (1811–1893). Graduated from the Nicholas Military Academy (1856) and served as an ensign of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment (1857–62). Occasional student of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1852–63, attended the costume class from 1858) and travelled across Finland with Luigi Premazzi (early 1860s). Awarded the title of artist (1863). Studied in Munich and under Jean-François Portals in Brussels (1865–68), lived and worked in Germany, Italy and France (1869–85), where he was influenced by the painting of the Barbizon School and Jean-Bapiste-Camille Corot in France. Visited Copenhagen, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Academician of watercolour painting (1868), full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1903). Returned to St Petersburg (1885) and painted watercolours of Old Russian architecture, traditional ornaments and religious and household objects (late 1880s–1890s). Painted watercolour studies of the St Boris and St Gleb Monastery on the River Ustye near Rostov and the Monastery of the Saviour in Yaroslavl (second half of 1880s). Member of the Society of Russian Watercolourists and the Royal Belgian Watercolour Society, founding member of the Russian Society of Printers and the Russian Society of Bibliophiles, board member of the Russian Society of Stenography. Died in St Petersburg (1910). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1863). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1863–73, 1884–89), Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (1880), Imperial Society of Russian Watercolourists (1885–1900), Travelling Academy Exhibitions (1886–89), Pan-Russian Exhibitions in Moscow (1882) and Nizhny Novgorod (1896), World Exhibitions in Vienna (1873), Brussels (1874) and Paris (1878, 1900) and posthumous one-man shows in St Petersburg (1912, 1913).