Bogdanov-Belskii, Nikolai

Born Dec. 8 (20), 1868, in the village of Shopotovo, Bel’skii District, Smolensk Province; died 1945, in the Latvian SSR. Russian genre painter.

Bogdanov-Bel’skii studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1884–89) under V. D. Polenov, V. E. Makovskii, and I. M. Prianishnikov, and at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1890’s) under I. E. Repin. He became a full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1914. From 1895 he was a member of the Society of Traveling Art Exhibitions. Bogdanov-Bel’skii’s work during the 1890’s was marked by a democratic tendency and a great degree of observation and warmth in depicting the life of rural schools and peasant children. From the early 1900’s the salon portrait occupied a large place in Bogdanov-Bel’skii’s creative work, whereas his scenes of the life of the common people gradually acquired a superficial and sentimental character. From 1921 he lived in Latvia. Bogdanov-Bel’skii’s works include Oral Exercise in Arithmetic (1895, Tretiakov Gallery), At the School Doors (1897, Russian Museum, Leningrad), a portrait of V. I. Sergievich (1908, Russian Museum), and A Summer Day (1931, Art Museum of the Latvian SSR, Riga).