Sketch to the painting „Dmitry-Tsarevich killed“

This oil sketch from 1899, held at the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, is a preparatory study for the larger finished composition depicting Tsarevich Dimitry, the martyred son of Ivan the Terrible. Nesterov habitually worked through compositional and tonal problems in oil studies before committing to the final canvas, and these sketches offer an unguarded view of his pictorial thinking. The Uglich tragedy — the 1591 death of the young tsarevich and his canonisation by the Orthodox Church — was a subject Nesterov approached with great reverence, and these preparatory works show him testing the relationship between the figure, the sacred landscape, and the quality of spiritual light that would define the finished work. Sketches like this one also document the artist's working method during a period of sustained productivity: the late 1890s saw Nesterov engaged with large-scale religious commissions alongside smaller, more intimate easel works.

Executed in oil on canvas with the freer, more spontaneous touch characteristic of preparatory studies, the work shows Nesterov establishing basic tonal masses and compositional structure without committing to fine detail. Brushwork is broader and more energetic than in the finished versions, revealing the artist's instinctive approach to spatial organisation.