Zhuravlev, Firs Sergeevich

Born Dec. 10 (22), 1836, in Saratov; died Sept. 4 (17), 1901, in St. Petersburg. Russian genre painter.

Zhuravlev studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, from 1855 as a nonmatriculated student, where he participated in the “revolt of the fourteen” (the refusal of a number of students to create paintings on a single theme for competition). In 1863 he left the Academy of Arts to found the Artists’ Artel. From 1862 to 1875 he was under police surveillance for his democratic convictions. He taught at the Drawing School of the Society for the Advancement of the Arts (1866, 1871–72), becoming an academician in 1874. In its unmasking of social evils, Zhuravlev’s work resembles that of the peredvizhniki (the “wanderers,” a progressive art movement), for example, Before the Wedding (1874; Russian Museum in Leningrad, variant in the Tret’iakov Gallery) and Merchant’s Funeral Repast (1876; Tret’iakov Gallery).