In the 1880s he became a fashionable author of portraits and historical paintings. At the World's Fair of 1889 in Paris he received the "Large Gold Medal" for his paintings "Death of Ivan the Terrible", "The Judgement of Paris", and "Demon and Tamara". He was one of the most highly appreciated and highly paid Russian artists of the time. Many democratic critics considered him as a renegade of the Wanderers' ideals, producing (like Henryk Siemiradzki) striking but shallow works, while others see him as a forerunner of Russian Impressionism.