Schilder Nikolai Gustavovich
Nikolai Gustavovich Schilder is a Russian artist, an academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts, a master of genre and battle painting, and a portrait painter.
Years of life: March 12 (24), 1828, Kharkov — March 13 (25), 1898, Tsarskoye Selo
The Path in Art
Attempts to start learning. In 1845 and 1846, he tried to enter the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, but was not accepted.
Studying at the Academy. In 1850, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, where he spent more than 10 years. He studied in the class of battle painting with B. P. Villevalde; the teacher even petitioned the Academy Council to allocate the student the allowance that Schilder received until 1858.
The first successes. In 1853, he received a small silver medal for the painting "Picket of the Lithuanian Life Guards Regiment. From the outpost service." In 1854-1855 he wrote works on the themes of the Crimean War (in particular, "Farewell of the militia", now in the State Museum of Fine Arts).
A turn towards genre painting
Influenced by the work of P. A. Fedotov, Schilder turned to the everyday genre ("painting folk scenes"). The key work of this period is Temptation (1857). The artist received a large silver medal for it. This painting is also notable in the history of collecting.: It was among the early acquisitions of P. M. Tretyakov (it is often mentioned in connection with the beginning of the formation of the Tretyakov Gallery). The author's repetition of the work of the same name is preserved in the Serpukhov Historical and Art Museum.
Rank and future work
In 1861, for the painting "Reckoning with Creditors," Schilder was awarded the title of academician of genre and battle painting.
Since the 1860s, he worked a lot in the genre of portraiture; among his works are portraits of Major General Petukhov, children's portraits in pastel technique. In the 1880s‑ he painted portraits of Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna. It is also known that Schilder repeatedly received permission to copy paintings from the Winter Palace (including portraits of Alexander Suvorov, Catherine II, etc.).
In addition to secular painting, he was also engaged in icon painting: in 1862-1863 he created an iconostasis for a church in the Danilovsky district of the Yaroslavl province.
Significance and legacy
"Temptation" has firmly entered the history of Russian art and museum culture as one of the landmark works of the mid-19th century; it is kept in the Tretyakov Gallery.
Sketches of the competition programs ("The Pawnbroker", "The Bride's Conspiracy") are in the collections of the State Russian Museum.
Schilder's work reflects an important transition in Russian painting: from battle scenes to a social genre painting, where moral issues are raised through a domestic scene.
His son, Andrey Nikolaevich Schilder (1861-1919), became a famous landscape painter, a pupil of I. I. Shishkin.