Nikolai Dmitriev-Orenburgsky

Nikolai Dmitrievich Dmitriev-Orenburgsky (; 1 November 1838 or 1 April 1837 – 21 April 1898) was a battle and genre painter from the Russian Empire who added to his surname, to distinguish him from other artists Dmitrievs, epithet: Orenburgsky. He lived and worked in Paris from 1875 to 1885.

Biography Orenburgsky was one of the fourteen students who decided in 1863 to leave the Imperial Academy of Arts as part of the Revolt of the Fourteen and to form an independent artistic society, the Petersburg Cooperative of Artists (Artel), which preceded the Association of Travelling Art Exhibits, the basis of the peredvizhniki circle.

Orenburgsky is known for the military themes that predominated his work after he participated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, and for paintings depicting Russian village life (the lives of simple people, the peasants, in specific). In the project documenting The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, in which some of his Russian village life paintings were exhibited, it is so commented of Dmitriev-Orenburgsky's work: "A noticeable feature is the air of sadness depicted in scenes of Russian life, even in those which portray its more cheerful phases. Thus in "Sunday in a Village", by Dmitrieff-Orenbursky, where peasants are trying to make merry, we can see that they are only trying, and with indifferent success", and it is commented furthermore: "To stand before this canvas is to have very much the sensation of being set down in a Russian village on a Sunday afternoon".

Dmitriev-Orenburgsky's work is collected and exhibited, inter alia, in the Hermitage Museum, The Russian Museum, the Military Historical Museum and The Museum of Russian Art.

Works