Konstantin Makovsky

Painter. Son of the artist Yegor Makovsky (1800–1886), elder brother of Vladimir Makovsky, father of art critic Sergei Makovsky (1877–1962). Studied under Michele Scotti, Apollon Mokritsky and Sergei Zaryanko at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1851–58) and at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1858–63). Won minor silver medals (1857, 1858), a major silver medal (1859) and a minor gold medal (1863). 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 (1863). Member of the St Petersburg Artel of Artists (1863), founding member of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (1870), St Petersburg Society of Artists (1898) and the Society for the Rebirth of Artistic Rus (1915). Academician (1867), professor (1869), full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1898). Painted sentimental genre scenes (1860s), portraits of society beauties (from 1870s) and Russian history pictures (1880s–90s). Married the actress Elena Burkova (1866), who died of consumption (1873). Travelled across the Middle East and North Africa (1873–76) and visited Serbia and Bulgaria (1877). Married the singer Yulia Letkova (1875) and lived mostly in Paris (from 1875), where he opened a studio (mid-1880s) and fell in love with Maria Matavtina (1889), who was thirty years his junior and bore him four children (1891–1900). Divorced his second wife (1892) and married Maria Matavtina (1898). Died in Petrograd after his horse-driven carriage was hit by an electric tram (1915). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1860). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1860–73, 1881, 1890, 1892), Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (1874, 1879–83, 1897), Society of Russian Watercolourists (1885–91, 1901), St Petersburg Society of Artists (1898–1916), Pan-Russian Exhibition of Art and Industry in Moscow (1882) and Nizhny Novgorod (1896), World Exhibitions in London (1872) and Vienna (1873), Expositions Universelles in Antwerp (1885) and Paris (1889, gold medal) and Esposizione Internazionale in Rome (1911).