Fedor Solntsev
1801–1892 · Russian painter and art historian
Fedor Grigoryevich Solntsev (1801-1892) was a Russian painter and art historian, active in Saint Petersburg and Moscow during the reign of Nicholas I. His importance lies in recording and preserving medieval Russian culture, a recurring subject in both his paintings and his documentary work.
Born in a village near Rybinsk, in the Yaroslavl Governorate, he was the son of serfs. After his talent came to light, his family was freed, and in 1815 he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, where he studied under Alexei Yegorov and Stepan Shchukin. He graduated in 1824, and in 1836 he became a member of the Academy with a work depicting Grand Duke Sviatoslav meeting John Tzimisces. In 1876 he was appointed professor at the institution.
Backed by Alexei Olenin, the Academy's president, and by the emperor himself, he worked on decorating the Kremlin's imperial dinner rooms and private apartments, and on restoring many Moscow buildings, among them the Grand Kremlin Palace and the Armoury. He also painted church interiors in Moscow and Kiev.
From 1830 he produced more than 3,000 detailed drawings of historical and archaeological artefacts. Some seven hundred of them formed the basis of the six-volume Antiquities of the Russian State, published after Olenin's death. His legacy remains a key source on early Russian art, and together with Metropolitan Philaret and Archimandrite Photius he is regarded as one of the founders of the modern Russian icon-painting canon.