Mikhail Ilich Bocharov

Born Jan. 3 (15), 1831, in Moscow; died July 13 (25), 1895, in St. Petersburg. Russian stage artist and landscape painter.

Bocharov studied in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture and under M. N. Vorob’ev in the St. Petersburg Academy of Art (as a nonmatriculated student, graduating in 1858); he became an academician in 1863. He was a stage designer of imperial (state) theaters from 1864. Utilizing the achievements of archaeology and Russian landscape painting of the 1860’s, Bocharov sought to attain historical truth and at the same time to introduce emotional content into the production of plays on national themes (operas Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky, 1874, and Blacksmith Vakula by Tchaikovsky, 1877, in Mariinskii Theater in St. Petersburg.)