Vyacheslav Schwarz

Vyacheslav Grigorevich Schwarz, or Shvarts (Russian: Вячеслав Григорьевич Шварц; 4 October 1838 — 10 April 1869) was a Russian painter, active in St. Petersburg and his native Kursk Governorate during Tsar Alexander II's reign, best known for his pictures of pre-Petrine Russia.

Biography

Born in Kursk to a Russian family, paternally he was also of Danish ancestry. His father, , was an Imperial Lieutenant General who made his recognition during the Napoleonic Wars and later in Caucasus, where he served as chief of the Jaro-Belokany Military District in Zakatali Okrug, where Vyacheslav spent his childhood.

In 1846, he and his mother moved to Moscow, where he received his first art lessons at the Moscow School of Drawing. The following year, he was granted admission to the Page Corps, but never served because his mother didn't want him to have a military career. He was finally brought to Saint Petersburg in 1851 and was enrolled in the Imperial Alexander Lyceum the following year. He was also a talented linguist, having acquired a working knowledge of French, German and English by the age of ten.

While at the Lyceum, his drawings attracted the attention of the art faculty and he was able to study under Arseny Meshchersky, who introduced him to oil painting. In 1859, he was graduated with a gold medal and the rank of "Class IX" in the Civil Service. Later that year, he was given permission to audit classes at Saint Petersburg Imperial University, where he came under the influence of Nikolay Kostomarov. He had already begun attending classes at the Imperial Academy of Arts, to study military art with Bogdan Willewalde The following year, he created illustrations for The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov by Lermontov and Prince Serebrenni by A. K. Tolstoy. By the middle of 1868 he was finding it difficult to continue working. Some of what would be his last completed works earned him the status of Honorary Free Member at the academy.

More selected paintings