Lebedev, Mikhail Ivanovich
(1811-1837)

MI Lebedev lived a short life, but managed to become one of the best Russian landscape painters of the first half of the XIX century. His works were snapped up, and had to do several iterations to meet all the fans.

His fate is extremely happy ... He was the son of a serf, but in the 1820s. Estonia abolished serfdom, and Lebedev gets the opportunity to go to school.

Exceptional artistic talent spotted the young men, and he develops high patrons, through which in 1829 he is in the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Academic course passed over four years.

In 1833, for the landscape, "View near Lake Ladoga," Lebedev awarded a gold medal, which gives the right to a pensioner's trip abroad.
Lebedev in 1834 goes to Italy to Rome, where he was warmly greets a large colony of Russian artists led by "the great Charles" - K. Briullov , which literally caressed Lebedev and helped him get used to the new environment. However, A. A. Ivanov, the first Italian artist did not like, but later he changed his mind.

Tirelessly Lebedev wrote the neighborhood of Rome. His works are called "Walk in Albano, near Rome," "View of Castel Gandolfo near Rome" (both 1835-36), "Ariccia, near Rome," "View of neighborhoods Albano near Rome" (both 1836), "In the park Gigi "(1837).

Landscapes Lebedev are small, finely written, brilliantly and at the same expressivity. They are harmonious and at the same time full of internal dynamics. Lebedev loves stretching deep dark alleys, the play of sunlight in a lacy foliage of trees and patches of sunlight, as if this made it through the foliage and suddenly fell on the tracks. He likes to compare the detailed written front and melting into the haze was given. He likes to "light" red lights and colors ... Italian girls cute skirts in a deep green leaves and grass. His paintings radiate light. They are full of joy and delight at the beauty of the world. They are usually called romantic. It really is. Yes, and it's hard not to be romantic when you're twenty-five years, when you are seething vitality, when the boundless world unfolds before you, when everything fails, when the present perfect, and the future looks radiant, amazing and endless. But ...

In May, 1837 Lebedev sent to Naples to work in the summer in his beautiful and much-loved landscape painters around. Here, the artist finds a sudden epidemic of cholera broke out. "My God, What are the losses in one year: Pushkin and Marly as poets and Lebedev, whom Russia could be proud of as the best landscape painter in Europe" - so said the news of the death of Lebedev to Briullov .