Oil painting -> List of Painters -> Vasily Andreevich Tropinin

   Vasily Andreevich Tropinin

Early Days:    Vasily was born as a serf of Count Munich in the village Karpovka of Novgorod guberniya and then transferred to Count Morkov’s as a part of the Munich's daughter's dowry. Soon he was sent to Saint Petersburg to study the trade of a confectioner. Instead of learning his trade Tropinin secretly attended free drawing lessons in the Imperial Academy of Arts.

Career:

At the dawn of his success, Count Morkov recalled Tropinin from St. Petersburg to his Ukrainian estate Kupavka. Tropinin was appointed a confectioner and a lackey. Soon the owner changed his mind and assigned Tropinin to copy the works of European and Russian painters and produce portraits of the Morkov’s. Tropinin also painted the local church.

Tropinin spent around twenty years of his life in Ukraine, and many of his works from that time were of Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian country side.