page_title: Nicolai Ivanovich Kravchenko
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Nicolai Ivanovich Kravchenko / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo from the magazine "New Time" 1913. The photo shows the artist N.I. Kravchenko against the background of the painting "The Taking of Beijing"
context_page_description: Nicolai Ivanovich Kravchenko was a Russian battle painter, journalist and writer.
context_section_description: Kravchenko studied in Odessa's gymnasium in municipal Realschule and Odessa's school of fine arts, which he graduated from in 1888 with a silver medal. In the same year Kravchenko moved to Saint Petersburg and entered the class of battle painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts. He was immediately taken to the second course to Bogdan Willewalde.
  The collision with old professors and unwillingness to obey their daily requirements led the young artist to the realization that his further stay at the academy was useless. That's why he came back to Odessa. In 1891, Kravchenko went to Paris, where at the same time he worked in both Academie Julian and the Academie Colarossi. With the help of his friend, who then was studying in Ecole des beaux arts, Kravchenko drawings were shown to Professor Jerome, who willingly took him as a student. Lessons at French academy of fine arts didn't interfere with artist's work at home and drawing some portraits. One of them (Dr's. Brissot) was taken to the Salon Champs de Mars and attracted the attention of Paris press. In 1893 Kravchenko showed his sketch of a Russian girl student at the same salon.
  At the same time he got acquainted with Suvorin and Skolkovsky. They persuaded Kravchenko to move to Saint Petersburg.
  When he returned to Russia, Kravchenko performed a series of portraits of prominent contemporary figures from nature. When Kravchenko got close with officer environment of the guard regiments in St. Petersburg, he got an access to encampments and maneuvers and made a series of drawnings, depicting the life and types of soldiers of the Leib Guard of Pavlovsky Regiment, which was able to demonstrate to Emperor Nicholas II in 1900 at a regimental holiday. 
   At the beginning of 1902, Kravchenko went to Manchuria and China with the aim to collect material to illustrate the campaign of Russian troops in China in 1900-1901. He visited Mukden, Liaoyang, Port Arthur, Takuya, Tianjin, Beijing, Tunjou, Yingkou and some places of Great Wall of China.
  His correspondence from there was published in the journal New Time and attracted a lot of attention. All his impressions about this trip were collected in his own illustrated book: To China (St.Petersburg, 1904). After returning from a trip, Kravchenko was honored to be invited to Livadia, where he demonstrated to the Sovereign a report on his journey in the form of several hundred studies, drawings and sketches, which illustrated battlefields of 1900, types of soldiers and Chinese, views of Beijing and many other items.
  With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Kravchenko went to the Far East and was a witness of the death of battleship Petropavlovsk in Port Arthur, which he captured and vividly described in New Time.
  Kravchenko's painting "The death of the destroyer Petropavlovsk on Japanese mines" is situated in exposition of the Central Naval Museum of St. Petersburg. At the theaters of war, Kravchenko did not stay very long. His impressions about the events of the Russo-Japanese War are described by him in the book To the War (St. Petersburg, 1906).The events that he reproduced in a series of drawings that are placed in the «Manchuria» albums of the artist Martynov, in the «Chronicle of the War with Japan», in edition by D. N. Dubensky's and in the Chronicle of the War with Japan on land and at sea edition by V. Berezovsky's . By the order of the Russian Emperor, Kravchenko completed a large portrait and a half-length portrait with the help of colored pencils. This portrait was brought to Nicholas II.
  In 1910, philanthropist and collector Princess M.K. Tenisheva purchased the watercolor "Chinese Soldier" by Kravchenko for the Russian Museum, where it is still situated in the art department.
  The fond of Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg acquired for his collection Kravchenko's portrait of the famous Russian prose writer and actor of the theater Ivan Fedorovich Gorbunov.
  The A.A.Bakhrushin Theater Museum also expanded his collection with a portrait of the ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater L.P. Barash, the work of N.I. Kravchenko.
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caption: N.I. Kravchenko on the background of the painting "The Taking of Beijing"
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