Alexei Korzukhin

Painter, teacher. Born to a family of gold panners at Uktussky Zavod near Ekaterinburg (1835). Painted icons for the local Church of the Transfiguration and portraits of relatives (1840s). Worked at the Nizhne-Isetsk Railway Factory and the Ekaterinburg Mint (1848–58). Studied under Pyotr Basin, Fidelio Bruni and Alexei Markov at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1858–63). Awarded minor silver medals (1858, 1860), major silver medals (1859, 1861) and a minor gold medal (1861). One of the rebellious fourteen students who refused to paint the set topic in the competition for a major gold medal and resigned from the Imperial Academy of Arts with the title of second-class artist (1863). Founding member of the St Petersburg Artel of Artists (1863) and the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (1870). Taught at the School of Drawing of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists (from 1864). Awarded the title of first-class artist (1865), academician (1868), full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1893). Decorated the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (1875–77) and the Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ in Riga (1891). Suffered from nervous shock and poor health after witnessing the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on the Catherine Canal in St Petersburg (1881). Died in St Petersburg (1894). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Society of Exhibitions of Works of Art, Siberian-Ural Exhibition of Science and Industry in Ekaterinburg (1887), Great London Exposition (1862), Second Annual International Exhibition in London (1872), Weltausstellung in Vienna (1873), Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia (1876) and the Exposition Universelle in Paris (1878).