Alexey
Mikhailovich Kolesov

Born in known for its craftsmen the city of Kovrov of the Vladimir province. Art education has received in just before this established (1843) the Moscow school of painting and sculpture, which received in 1851. Already in 1856 for the "Portrait of an old man" the young artist receives from the St. Petersburg Academy of arts (in the present time, the Academy had the right to assign "ranks" to the graduates of educational institutions) the title of class artist (not much of a chin, but otherwise outside the Academy cannot be obtained). This was followed by years of work and, consequently, growth of skill. Only in 1876 for a number of portraits of famous Moscow people, among them the Portrait of the historian S. M. Soloviev, A. Kolesov gets the title of class artist.

He lives and works in Moscow, in addition to portraits (should be allocated which are more realistic and skill the portraits of the artists of S. K. Zaryanko, S. N. Ammosov, I. I. Shishkin, A. K. Savrasov and traveler p. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky) writes of genre scenes with a simple plot: "Lines on maps" (1856), "the Girl with the broken vase" (1858), "Peasant woman serving soldier drink" (1859), "Hunter" (1864), etc. the Artist leads a life not grabbing the stars from the sky, but have a very high reputation as a skillful master. But in 1880-ies in the works of A. M. Kolesov, there are significant changes: it moves away from secular painting and begins to paint icons. His success in the new case is so obvious that soon the artist began to head Moscow school of icon painting.