Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy is an outstanding representative of the democratic culture in Russia of the second half of the 19th century. He is known as a wonderful painter and draughtsman, a remarkable art critic and theoretician of art, a talented teacher. Besides, he was an originator and ardent inspirer of the first independent artistic organizations, namely the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling Exhibitions and St. Petersburg Team of Artists, which had played an important part in the development of art in Russia. Ivan Kramskoy is famous mainly as a portraitist; his portraits of the 60s are not large, and very often monochrome, reminding of photographs. Kramskoy’s works embody the high moral and social ideals of his time. For him, artistic truth and beauty, moral and aesthetic values were inseparable. His works greatly influenced his contemporaries’ ideology. Today they still affect people because the artist’s attitude to life was based on love and respect of man, on his belief in truth and justice.
