Nikolai Bodarevsky

Nikolai Kornilievich Bodarevsky (; 6 December 1850 – 1921) was a Ukrainian-born Russian painter and art professor; associated with the Peredvizhniki.

Biography

He was born to a family of the old Moldavian nobility and his father was a Titular Councillor. He graduated from the Odessa Art School, which was a branch of the Imperial Academy of Arts. From 1869 to 1873, he attended the academy, where he studied with Pyotr Shamshin, Timofey Neff and Vasily Petrovich Vereshchagin. After becoming acquainted with the works of Whistler, he painted numerous female portraits in a similar style, including one of the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

In 1889, Vasily Safonov, Director of the Moscow Conservatory, commissioned him to paint fourteen portraits of famous composers for the Great Hall. As part of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign during Joseph Stalin's rule, four portraits were removed in 1953, in favor of other composers. Mendelssohn and Haydn were recovered in 1999 and reinstalled. Gluck and Handel remain missing.

Along with Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov, Andrei Ryabushkin and others, he participated in decorating the new Church of the Savior on Blood; providing sketches for sixteen mosaics of scenes from the Bible and the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1908, for his work there, he was named an "Academician" by the academy. His work is little known outside Russia, as he never exhibited abroad.

After the Revolution, he returned to Odessa and died there during a famine related to the Russian Civil War, although it is unclear whether or not that was the cause of his death.

Selected paintings