Nikolai Koshelev

Painter, draughtsman, restorer, teacher. Born in the family of a serf called Andrei Koshelev in the village of Serman in Penza Province (1840). Studied icon-painting under craftsman for three years in Nizhny Novgorod and history painting under Alexei Markov and Fidelio Bruni at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1860–65). Awarded a minor silver medal (1862) and a minor gold medal (1864). Member of the Pyotr Krestonostsev Artel of Artists (1864–65) and the St Petersburg Artel of Artists (1865–71). Awarded the title of class artist (1865). Made sixty Russian history drawings (1865–67). Painted murals for the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (1865–79). Academician (1873), professor (1878). Visited Germany and France (1878–83) and lived in Rome (1880–81), where he painted The Entombment (1881). Member of the Mussar Mondays (1881–1917), chairman of the Society of Mutual Assistance of Russian Artists. Restored murals in the altar of St Isaac’s Cathedral (1882). Designed three large mosaic compositions for the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in St Petersburg and painted icons and murals for churches in St Petersburg, Russia and abroad. Travelled across the Middle East and Egypt (1891). Painted eighteen pictures on the theme of Christ’s Passions for the St Alexander Nevsky Church in Jerusalem (church was built in the late 1880s and early 1890s). Taught at the Baron Stieglitz Central School of Technical Drawing (1883–1906), Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and the Stroganov School of Technical Drawing (1880s–90s). Died in Petrograd (1918). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1862). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1862–69, 1884–93), Moscow Society of Lovers of the Arts (1881–83, 1887, 1913), Society of Exhibitions of Works of Art (1880s), St Petersburg Society of Artists (1894–1918), Society of Artists of History Painting (1895) and the Pan-Russian Exhibitions in Moscow (1882) and Nizhny Novgorod (1896).