Yegor Meyer

Painter, graphic artist, explorer. Father-in-law of Pavel Chistyakov. Studied under Maxim Vorobyov at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1838–45). Awarsided two major silver medals (1839, 1844) and a major gold medal and the title of fourteenth-class artist (1845). Painted views of the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo and the Chinese Palace in Oranienbaum for the imperial court (1840s). Visited Siberia and Manchuria (1841–42), travelled across Bessarabia, Ukraine and the Crimea with Pavel Rizzoni (1849). Foreign fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1846–49). Academician (1853). Lived and worked in Siberia (1855–63). Accompanied the Siberian expedition of the Russian Geographic Society (1855–58), travelling widely across the Far East and depicting the construction of the first Russian towns – Blagoveschensk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Aigun and Irkutsk. Contributed drawings to Georg Wilhelm Timm’s Russian Art Leaflet and illustrated the books of Richard Maack, Leopold Shrenk and Lev Sternberg. Opened a studio in Nikolaevsk and served as the regional statistician and governor of the Nikolaevsk and Udskoe districts. Helped to repulse an Anglo-French landing at De-Kastri Bay on the Pacific coast during the Crimean War (1855) and served on the commission establishing the Sino-Russian border (1861). Returned for health reasons to St Petersburg (1863), where he died and was buried at the Smolensk Cemetery (1867). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1843).