icholai Egorovich Sverchkov
(St. Petersburg 1817 - Tsarskoye Selo 1898)
Winter Sleigh Ride
Biography
Nikolai Yegorovich Sverchkov was a Russian painter and engraver. Sverchkov's Return from the Bear Hunt, exhibited in 1863, was bought by Napoleon III. For this and two other paintings (The Fair and The Station) Sverchkov was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor. Returning to Petersburg from abroad in 1864, Sverchkov painted The Turn-Out of Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich on the Military Parade of 1664 for Alexander II.
Originally Sverchkov served in the economic department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1839 he sent his first paintings to academic exhibition and two years later left his governmental office. An animal painter, Sverchkov started his creative work at the Khrenovskiy and Chesmenskiy state stud farms. In 1852 he was awarded the title of academician of "the folk genre". The 1850s were marked by his friendship with Nikolai Nekrasov, in whose Yaroslavl manor of Karabikha Sverchkov spent much of his time.