Dospevskii, Stanislav

(also S. Dospevski; pseudonym of Zafir Zograf). Born Dec. 3, 1823, in Samokov; died Jan. 6, 1878, in Istanbul, Turkey. Bulgarian painter of the time of the Bulgarian renaissance. A nephew of the painter Z. Zograf.

Dospevskii studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (in the early 1850’s) and at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1853-56) with F. A. Bruni. He was one of the creators of Bulgarian secular realistic art. Dospevskii’s terse, manfully restrained portraits (self-portrait, 1854, National Gallery of Art, Sofia; portrait of K. Nektariev, 1862, Art Gallery, Plovdiv; portrait of D. Lambreva, 1862, Dospevskii’s House-Museum, Pazardzhik; portrait of S. Chomakov, National Gallery of Art, Sofia) are truthful character studies of his contemporaries. He participated in the national liberation struggle of the Bulgarian people and died in a Turkish prison.