Bogoliubov, Aleksei

Born Mar. 16 (28), 1824, in the village of Pomeran’e, Novgorod Province, now in Leningrad Oblast; died Nov. 7, 1896, in Paris. Russian painter of seascapes. Naval officer. After 1853 an artist attached to the Central Naval Headquarters.

Bogoliubov studied under M. N. Vorob’ev and B. P. Villeval’de at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1850–53). As the recipient of a stipend from the Academy of Arts (1854–60), he worked in the studios of E. Isabey in Paris and A. Achenbach in Düsseldorf. After 1873 he lived for the most part in France. At the beginning of his creative life, he was influenced by I. K. Aivazovskii. In Bogoliubov’s creative art, two tendencies existed simultaneously, neither having more than a slight effect on the other. One of them was connected with the tradition of documentary, historical depictions of naval battles (The Battle of Granhamn, 1866, Russian Museum, Leningrad) and seascapes in the spirit of academic romanticism (The Mouth of the Neva, 1872, Tret’iakov Gallery). The other tendency was related to the formation of the realistic, plein-air style of landscapes in European art, which evolved during the second half of the 19th century (Forest in Veules, Normandy, 1871, Tret’iakov Gallery). Bogoliubov was a member of the Society of Traveling Art Exhibitions (after 1873). He was the founder of the A. N. Radishchev Art Museum (opened in 1885) and the Drawing School in Saratov (opened in 1897).