Konstantin Makovsky

Konstantin Makovsky (1839–1915) was a leading Russian painter of the late Imperial period, celebrated for lavish history pieces set in seventeenth-century boyar Russia and for fashionable Belle Époque portraits. Trained at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and at the Imperial Academy of Arts, he belonged to the founding group of the Peredvizhniki before pursuing a more decorative and salon-oriented career. His richly costumed Old Russian banquets, weddings, and boyar subjects found an enthusiastic market in both Russia and abroad, particularly in the United States.

Makovsky painted in a polished academic manner with brilliant color, meticulous attention to textile and jewelry, and theatrical lighting. His palette favors deep reds, blues, and gold, and his compositions often unfold as staged tableaux.

As the most successful painter of romantic-nationalist Russian subjects for the international market, Makovsky shaped European and American visual ideas of pre-Petrine Russia.