Alexey
Stepanovich Stepanov

Painter and draftsman, Acad. painting (1905). He studied at the Mosk. Uch-school of painting, sculpture and architecture (1880-84),then taught there (с1899 Professor); member. T-mobile VA hood. exhibitions (from 1891), the Union of Rus.artists (с1903). In 1906 - 14 S. lived and worked in the estates Lubentina, Garusova, the Bank (now udomelsky district), where he wrote over 50 paintings, including "Early spring. The herd" (1901), "Left" (1911-14, both in the state Tretyakov gallery) and others In Tver. . art Gal. -"Girlfriends" (1913-14), sketches, drawings. Lit.: Lavrova O. I., Alexei Stepanovich Stepanov, M., 1973; Katz, L. I., the Artists in udomelsky region, Moscow, 1983.

Humble, sensitive, kind, A. S. Stepanov, "Stopochka" as he was called, loved, and valued friends - S. V. Ivanov, N. Chekhov, brothers S. and A. Korovin, I. I. Levitan, M. Nesterov, and many students, among whom were P. D. Korin, And Reservoirs, L. V. Turzhansky etc. Korin after the exhibition, Stepanova said: "I Like Pushkin's poems were read. That's just easy, simple, and highly... What to say about him? The artist he was. That's all there is to say. Was it all simply, without effects. Soul was in him, and that's what counts. Again, a high artistry, craftsmanship unmatched. Sparkling it with his great simplicity." Stepanov very early lost his parents. From the age of seven he was raised by his guardian, at the insistence of the young man in 1879 he graduated from the Mezhevoy Institute in Moscow and acquired a profession of a surveyor. However, work in this specialty did not, and in 1880 he entered the Moscow school of painting. He studied in the class of I. M. Pryanishnikov, studied successfully and in 1884 graduated from high school with a silver medal. In the second half of the 1880s Stepanov several summers working with I. I. Levitan - first under Zvenigorod, then on the Volga. Along with Levitan he is considered one of the founders of the so-called mood landscapes, when the artist is not only looking for the nature of the motif corresponding to its internal state, but psychologizers landscape, brings in his own thoughts and feelings. Stepanova works are plein-air nature, they are written broadly sketched, liquid, transparent smear, very softly, a few colors ("Paint less" - he advised his students later). Stepanov liked to portray the rural road on which the peasant horses pulling sleds or carts ("Jib", 1910-15; "country road in winter", "porch", both 1913 - 14; "Left", 1914). Liked to depict peasant children, watching the world - naked, poor, fall, but native and wide ("the Cranes are flying", 1891; "Children on the brushwood", 1899; "the outskirts", 1915-16). With enthusiasm wrote a hunting scene ("After the hunt. Return", 1907; "Dead moose", 1900-10; "greyhounds," 1910; "Saw", 1917). Stepanov loved animals and oildale the rare ability to transfer their habits and even psychology ("Moose", 1889; "the fishery", 1909; "the Elk and the likes", 1910; "the night Wolves", "Wolves at the fence", both 1910s; "waiting for dinner", 1910). The genre in which you prefer to work, the artist, can be called landscape-nonmalificence. Nesterov M. V. Stepanova considered the best animal painter after V. Serov. Serov also appreciated the gift of the artist, because insisted on inviting Stepanova as a lecturer at the school. For about twenty years (1899 - 1918) led Stepanov there "class of animals". His students loved him to distraction. Very little is known about the personal life of the artist shortly before his death he destroyed his files. But all of it - in his paintings.