Sternberg Vasily Ivanovich (1818-1845)

Sternberg (Vasily Ivanovich, 1818 - 1845) - painter, landscape and genre painter, son of mining official, first studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts as volnoprihodyaschego, and in 1835 was admitted to the number of state-owned academics. The head of his landscape paintings was in MN Sparrows , but on par with her ​​he was attracted to his painting home.

 A rare ability for the latter displayed a drawings and caricatures, which he did from the admission to the Academy, and which led to the surprise of his companions and teachers.

The summer months he spent in Little Russia, in the estate of his patron, the art lover, GS Tarnovskii; these trips close introduced him to the Ukrainian way of life and nature, which he reproduced in his masterful pencil drawings, watercolors and paintings.

In 1837, for work performed in the Little Russia in the preceding summer, including watercolor, "Fair in the town Ichnya" (purchased by Emperor Nicholas I to his wife for the album), the Academy has awarded the Sternberg small gold medal, and the following year, with the picture "Consecration pasoh in Little Russia" (also bought a gift for the Emperor, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna), he received a gold medal and the title of the artist Class XIV.

In 1840, he traveled to Orenburg in the graph Perovskogo expedition to Khiva, and then was sent to Italy as a pensioner of the Academy. Settling in Rome, he continued to work hard, although I felt like a stranger among the Italian people and nature. He was attracted to his homeland, to the familiar and favorite subjects. But fate did not judge him to return to Russia he died in Rome, in the prime of life, half way to the development of his remarkable talent.

Sternberg of the pictures, except for the above-mentioned "Consecration pasoh" well-known: "The game of hide and seek in the estate Tarnovskii GS", "Mills in the wilderness" (both at the Museum of Emperor Alexander III), "The Italians of the Pool," "The Italian-commoner "(both in the museum of the Academy of Fine Arts)," Roman pifferari "," Italian peasants playing cards osteria "," Study of a Head of a young Italian, "" Study of a Head of an Italian old man "(all four public museum in Moscow)," Little Russian tavern "," Vudubickiy near Kiev "," View in Kiev, "" Portrait of the Artist "," Lake Nemi, "" In the vicinity of Albano, "and" A Study of leaves "(all seven at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow) and" M . Glinka in the estate of GS Perovskogo for composing the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila "(with A. Markowitz). Drawings and watercolors by Sternberg are numerous and are found in nearly all public and private collections.