13 Facts About Mikhail Nesterov

1.

Mikhail Nesterov was one of the first exponents of Symbolist art in Russia.

2.

Mikhail Nesterov was born to a strongly patriarchal merchant family.

3.

Mikhail Nesterov was disappointed at the teaching there and returned to Moscow, only to find Perov on his deathbed, so he took lessons from Alexei Savrasov.

4.

Mikhail Nesterov spent six years there, off and on, creating 50 small murals and the iconostasis, but was dissatisfied with the results.

5.

Mikhail Nesterov was apparently much more pleased with later work at the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent.

6.

Mikhail Nesterov refused to work on the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw, because he did not approve of building an Orthodox cathedral in a predominantly Catholic city.

7.

Mikhail Nesterov painted numerous works there and the influence of his visit could be seen in his canvases for many years after.

8.

Mikhail Nesterov was inspired by the novels of Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov, dealing with the lives of the Old Believers in the Volga Region.

9.

Mikhail Nesterov returned to Moscow in 1920 and was forced to give up religious painting, although he continued to work on his Saint Sergius series in private.

10.

Mikhail Nesterov's daughter was sent to a prison camp in Zhambyl, where she was brutally interrogated before being released.

11.

Mikhail Nesterov was arrested and held for two weeks at Butyrka Prison.

12.

Mikhail Nesterov had a stroke while working on his painting "Autumn in the Village" and died at Botkin Hospital.

13.

The last religious symbolic painting Mikhail Nesterov painted before the revolution.