Grigory Gagarin

Prince Grigory Grigorievich Gagarin (, – ) was a Russian painter, Major General and administrator.

Biography

Youth

Grigory Gagarin was born in Saint Petersburg to the noble Rurikid princely Gagarin family. His father, Prince Grigory Ivanovich Gagarin (Saint Petersburg, – Tegernsee, 12 February 1837), was a Russian diplomat in France and later the ambassador to Italy. His paternal grandparents were Prince Ivan Sergeievich Gagarin and wife. His father married in Saint Petersburg in 1809 his mother Yekaterina Petrovna Soimonova (Saint Petersburg, 23 May 1790 – Moscow, ), daughter of Pyotr Alexandrovich Soimonov and wife Yekaterina Ivanovna Boltina. Thus until the age 13 the boy was with his family in Paris and Rome and then studied in the collegium Tolomei in Siena.

In 1832, he returned to Saint Petersburg, became acquainted with Alexander Pushkin and illustrated his works The Queen of Spades and The Tale of Tsar Saltan.

He worked as a Russian diplomat in Paris, Rome and Constantinople; stayed two years in Munich.

In 1848-1855 he lived in Tiflis serving under Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov. Among the military and administrative duties, Gagarin did a lot of works for the city. He built a theater there, frescoed the Tbilisi Sioni Cathedral, and restored frescoes of the old Georgian cathedrals, including the Betania monastery.

Imperial Academy of Arts

In 1855 Grigory moved to Saint Petersburg to work under Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, Duchess of Leuchtenberg, who was the president of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Here were born two other children: Prince Andrei in 1856; and Prince Alexander in 1858.

In 1858 Gagarin received the military rank of Major General. In 1859 he became the Vice President of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and he remained there until 1872. His last daughter, Princess Nina, was born in 1861.

Some sources list him as the President of the Academy, probably considering the Grand Duchess to be only a formal head of the institution. As the Vice President of the Academy Gagarin supported the "Byzantine style" (Russian Revival). He built the "Museum of Early Christian Art" at the Academy. Gagarin also continued to support Lermontov's poetry, staging Lermontov's Demon in the royal Hermitage Theatre (1856).

Gagarin died in Châtellerault, France in 1893.

Works