Pavel Fedotov

Pavel Fedotov spent about ten years as an officer in a Guards regiment in St Petersburg before he gave up the commission, and a steady salary, to paint. This was the Russia of Nicholas I, tightly policed and rank-conscious, and Fedotov turned that society into small, crowded genre scenes that read like the opening of a play.

His best-known picture shows a shabby aristocrat, a major deep in debt, arriving to propose to the daughter of a rich merchant. The merchant's family has money and no title, the major has a title and no money, and Fedotov fills the room with the tells of the bargain: the bride bolting in her fine gown, her mother catching her by the dress, the groom straightening himself in the doorway. He even wrote a rhymed commentary to be recited in front of the canvas.

Recognition came slowly and money never did. In his last years his eyesight and then his mind gave way, and he died in 1852 in a St Petersburg hospital for the insane, aged 36.