Vitold Kaetanovich Bialynitskii-Birulia

Born Jan. 31 (Feb. 12), 1872, in the village of Krynki, in what is now Mogilev Oblast; died June 18, 1957, in Moscow. Soviet landscape artist. People’s Artist of the Byelorussian SSR (1944) and the RSFSR (1947). Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947).

Bialynitskii-Birulia studied under V. D. Polenov, I. M. Prianishnikov, and S. A. Korovin at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1889-97). He was a member of the Association of Wandering Art Exhibitions (from 1904), the Union of Russian Artists, and the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (from 1922). He continued and developed the traditions of the Russian lyrical landscape prominent at the end of the 19th century. His works From the Environs of Piatigorsk (1892), Spring (1911), Nivoges (1936-37), and Byelorussia: Again Spring Has Blossomed (1947) are all in the Tret’iakov Gallery. He also painted a series of landscapes of the Lenin Hills, Iasnaia Poliana, and P. I. Tchaikovsky’s country estate at Klin. He was awarded two orders and various medals.