Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva

Graphic artist, painter, teacher. Born in St Petersburg to a high-ranking civil servant called Pyotr Ostroumov (1871). Studied under Johann Wilhelm Mathé at the Baron Stieglitz Central School of Technical Drawing (1889–91), under Ilya Repin and Pavel Chistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1892–1900), at the Académie Colarossi and James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s studio in Paris (1898–99) and under Léon Bakst at the Elizaveta Zvantseva School of Painting and Drawing in St Petersburg (1907–10). Member of the World of Art (1900; 1910, founding member), Union of Russian Artists (1903) and Four Arts (1924). Engraved works for the World of Art magazine (1901). Visited Italy (1903, 1911) and Paris (1906). Married the chemist Sergei Lebedev (1905). Created series of woodcuts and lithographs depicting urbanscapes in St Petersburg (1908–11), Venice (1911–14), Petrograd (1918–22) and Pavlovsk (1922–23). One of the first women (along with Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaya, Zinaida Serebryakova and Alexandra Schneider) to be considered for election to the Imperial Academy of Arts, only for the ballot to be cancelled by the revolution (1917). Taught at the Institute of Photography (1918–22) and the Academy of Arts (1934–35). Lived and worked in Koktebel in the Crimea (1924–27). Remained in the besieged city of Leningrad during the Second World War (1941–45). Died in Leningrad and buried at the St Alexander Nevsky Monastery (1955). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1894). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1898), World of Art (1900–03, 1906, 1911–18, 1922, 1924), 36 Artists (1901), Union of Russian Artists (1903–10), Exhibition of Modern Trends in Art (1908), Sergei Makovsky Salon (1909), Vladimir Izdebsky Salon (1909–10), Four Artists (from 1924), exhibitions of Russian art in Paris (1906), Berlin (1906) and Vienna (1908), international exhibitions in Venice (1907, 1924), Munich (1909), Brussels (1910), Rome (1914), Florence (1922) and Paris (1925) and a one-woman show in Petrograd (1916). People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1946), full member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1949).