1.04.1840 – 24.03.1894

Illarion Mikhailovich Pryanishnikov is a Russian artist, teacher, master of genre painting, member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and one of the founders of the Wanderers Association.

Illarion Mikhailovich was born in the village of Timashovo, Kaluga province, into a merchant family. Already at the age of 12, he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but left it a year later, as he had to work in a merchant’s shop. But later he resumed his studies, where until 1866 Pryanishnikov’s mentors were E.S. Sorokin, S.K. Zaryanko, A.N. Mokritsky and E.Ya. Vasiliev.

In 1864, the artist received a small silver medal for the painting Reading a Letter in a Small Shop, and in the year he graduated from college (1865) for the painting Jokers. Gostiny Dvor in Moscow” was awarded a large silver medal and the title of class artist of the 3rd degree.

The painter took an active part in the creation of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, becoming a founding member of this organization. He exhibited at almost all traveling exhibitions, and from the second exhibition he became a permanent member of the Board of the Association.

Since the beginning of the 1870s, Pryanishnikov, in accordance with the general trends of Russian painting, moved to a more “multidimensional” depiction of reality. His works began to be distinguished by greater compositional integrity and color richness.

In 1871-1872, Illarion Mikhailovich for the Polytechnic Exhibition in Moscow, together with V.E. Makovsky, G.G. Myasoedov, V.O. Sherwood and other artists worked on the creation of a series of paintings dedicated to the defense of Sevastopol in the Crimean War.

From 1873 and almost until the end of his life, Pryanishnikov taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, his students were: Arkhipov, Baksheev, Bogdanov-Belsky, Byalynitsky-Birulya, Zhukovsky, Ivanov, Kasatkin, Korin, Korovin, Lebedev, Malyutin, Stepanov and many others.

In 1874, Illarion Pryanishnikov, together with K.A. Trutovsky, V.E. Makovsky and I.N. Kramskoy illustrated the stories of N.V. Gogol “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, and also worked on the murals of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.

The artist died in 1894 from tuberculosis and was buried in the cemetery of the Novo-Alekseevsky Monastery in Moscow.