Vasily
Ivanovich Sternberg

Saint Petersburg 12.2.1818 - Rome 8.11.1845, an artist, a boarder at the Imperial Academy of Arts [I, 7, 22, may, monument ("Schr/Sterenberg") moved the remains were moved to a common grave II/2*; No. 343 and 334, in the administration of its number under two surnames: Sternberg and Schr].

Genre painter and landscape painter, the son of a mining official, first studied at the Imperial Academy of arts as an auditor, and in 1835 was admitted to the state-owned number of scholars. The head of it in landscape painting was M. N. Sparrows, but along with it he was attracted to his painting of household.

The rare ability of this latter showed drawings and cartoons that he has been doing since entering the Academy and which resulted in the surprise of his friends and teachers.

The summer months he spent in the Ukraine, on the estate of his patron he lover of art, G. S. Tarnovsky; these trips close introduced him to Ukrainian life and nature, which he reproduced in his masterful pencil drawings, watercolors and paintings.

In 1837, for work performed in the Ukraine in the preceding summer, including watercolor: "Fair in the town of Ichnya" (purchased by Emperor Nicholas I for the album of his wife), the Academy awarded the Sternberg small gold medal, and next year, for the painting "Consecration pasoh in the Ukraine" (purchased by the Emperor for a gift to Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna ), he received a gold medal and the title of the artist XIV class.

In 1840 he traveled to Orenburg in the expedition of count Perovsky to Khiva, and then was sent to Italy as a pensioner of the Academy. Settling in Rome, he continued to work hard, although he felt like a stranger among the Italian people and nature. He was attracted to the homeland, to the familiar and favorite stories. But fate had not destined for him to return to Russia; he died in Rome, in the Prime of life, midway to the development of his remarkable talent.

From pictures of Sternberg, in addition to the above "Consecration pasoh" known: "the Game of hide and seek in the estate of G. S. Tarnovsky, the Mill in the desert" (both in the Museum of Emperor Alexander III), "Italian women at a pond", "Italian-commoner" (both in the Museum of the Academy of fine arts), "Roman pifferari", "Italian peasants playing cards in Osteria", "head Study of a young Italian guy", "the old man's head Study-Italian" (all four in the Moscow public Museum), "Little tavern", "Vydubychi monastery near Kiev, in Kiev," "Portrait of the artist", "Lake Nemi," "In the vicinity of Albano" and "Study of leaves" (all seven in the Tretyakov gallery, Moscow) and "M. I. Glinka in the estate of G. S. Perovsky composing the Opera Ruslan and Lyudmila" (from A. N. Markovic). Drawings and watercolors Sternberg are numerous and found in almost all public and private collections.