Konstantin Makovsky

Konstantin Makovsky began among the Wanderers, the Russian realists who broke from the academy in 1863 to paint ordinary life, and he shared their taste for peasant subjects. Then success pulled him the other way.

By the 1880s he was Russia's most lucrative society painter, turning out lavish scenes of old Muscovy: boyar wedding feasts, women in pearl-heavy headdresses, tables loaded with gold plate. Americans loved them, his huge 'Boyar Wedding Feast' was bought in the United States, and he priced his canvases higher than almost any Russian of his day.

In September 1915 the 76-year-old was riding to his studio in Petrograd when his carriage was struck by an electric tram. He was thrown to the pavement and died of the head injury soon after.