Grigorii Grigorevich Miasoedov

Born Apr. 7 (19), 1834, in the village of Pan’kovo, in present-day Novodereven’kovskii Raion, Orel Oblast; died Dec. 18 (31), 1911, in Poltava. Russian painter.

From 1858 to 1862, Miasoedov studied under A. G. Markov and T. A. Neff in the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Between 1863 and 1868 he lived on a stipend in Germany, Italy, and France. He became a member of the academy in 1893. Miasoedov was a founding member of the peredvizhniki (the “wanderers”—a progressive art movement). His genre pictures truthfully depicted the poverty and disfranchisement of the peasantry (The Zemstvo at Dinner, 1872, Tret’iakov Gallery) and the poetic grandeur of peasant labor (The Mowers, 1887, Russian Museum, Leningrad). Miasoedov also did paintings on historical themes (The Reading of the Manifesto of February 19, 1861, 1873; Self-immolators, 1884—both in the Tret’iakov Gallery).