Alexei Kondratyevich Savrasov was a Russian landscape painter and creator of the lyrical landscape style. He began to draw early and in 1838 he enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and began to specialize in landscape painting. In 1857, he became a teacher at the school. His major disciples, Isaac Levitan and Konstantin Korovin, remembered their teacher with admiration and gratitude. In 1857, he married Sophia Karlovna Hertz. In their home they entertained artistic people and collectors including Pavel Tretyakov.
Savrasov became especially close with Vasily Perov. Perov helped him paint the figures of the boat trackers in Savrasov’s Volga near Yuryevets, Savrasov painted landscapes for Perov’s Bird catcher and Hunters on Bivouac. In the 1860s he traveled to England and Switzerland. In one of his letters he wrote that no academies in the world could so advance an artist as the present world exhibition. The painters who influenced him most were British painter John Constable and Swiss painter Alexandre Calame.
In 1870, he became a member of the Peredvizhniki group. In 1871, after the death of his daughter, there was a crisis in his art. These misfortunes were the reasons of his tragedy—he became an alcoholic. All attempts to help him were in vain. The last years of his life Savrasov led the life of a pauper, wandering from shelter to shelter. Only the doorkeeper of the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture and Pavel Tretyakov, founder of the Tretyakov Gallery, were present at his funeral.
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