Alexandra Egorovna Makovskaya (Russian painter) 1837 - 1915
Alexandra is the eldest of a quartet of painter's siblings that included: Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky (Константин Егорович Маковский) (Russian painter) 1839 - 1915 Nikolay Yegorovich Makovsky (Никола́й Его́рович Мако́вский) (Russian painter) 1841 - 1886 Vladimir Yegorovich Makovsky (Влади́мир Его́рович Мако́вский) (Russian painter, art collector, and teacher) 1846 - 1920. Her sister Maria was a singer. Her parents, the founders of this artistic family were: Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky (Егор Иванович Маковский) (Russian amateur artist, avid art collector and one of the founders of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) 1802 - 1866 and Lyubov Kornilovna Mollengauer (Любови Корниловне Молленгауэр) (Russian composer). Alexandra did not receive a formal artistic education. She studied painting with her father and his brothers. After a late parents' divorce, Alexandra lived with her mother in St. Petersburg. She became one of the first Russian women artists. * * * Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky (Russian painter) 1839 - 1915 Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky (Russian: Константин Егорович Маковский) was an influential Russian painter, affiliated with the "Peredvizhniki (Wanderers)". Many of his historical paintings, such as Beneath the Crown (1889) also known as The Russian Bride's Attire and Before the Wedding, showed an idealized view of Russian life of prior centuries. He is often considered a representative of Academic art. Konstantin Makovsky was born in Moscow. His father was the Russian art figure and amateur painter, Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky. His mother was a composer, and she hoped her son would one day follow in her footsteps. His younger brothers Vladimir and Nikolay and his sister Alexandra also went on to become painters. In 1851 Makovsky entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where he became the top student, easily getting all the available awards. His teachers were Karl Bryullov and Vasily Tropinin. Makovsky's inclinations to Romanticism and decorative effects can be explained by the influence of Bryullov. Although art was his passion, he also considered what his mother had wanted him to do. He set off to look for composers he could refer to, and first went to France. Before, he had always been a classical music lover, and listened to many pieces. He often wished he could change the tune, or style of some of them to make them more enjoyable. Later in his life it came true. In 1858 Makovsky entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. From 1860 he participated in the Academy's exhibitions with paintings such as Curing of the Blind (1860) and Agents of the False Dmitry kill the son of Boris Godunov (1862). In 1863 Makovsky and thirteen other students held a protest against the Academy's setting of topics from Scandinavian mythology in the competition for the Large Gold Medal of Academia; all left the academy without a formal diploma. Makovsky became a member of a co-operative (artel) of artists led by Ivan Kramskoi, typically producing Wanderers paintings on everyday life (Widow 1865, Herring-seller 1867, etc.). From 1870 he was a founding member of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions and continued to work on paintings devoted to everyday life. He exhibited his works at both the Academia exhibitions and the Traveling Art Exhibitions of the Wanderers. A significant change in his style occurred after traveling to Egypt and Serbia in the mid-1870s. His interests changed from social and psychological problems to the artistic problems of colors and shape. In the 1880s he became a fashioned author of portraits and historical paintings. At the World's Fair of 1889 in Paris he received the Large Gold Medal for his paintings Death of Ivan the Terrible, The Judgement of Paris, and Demon and Tamara. He was one of the most highly appreciated and highly paid Russian artists of the time. Many democratic critics considered him as a renegade of the Wanderers' ideals, producing (like Henryk Siemiradzki) striking but shallow works, while others see him as a forerunner of Russian Impressionism. Makovsky was killed in 1915 when his horse-drawn carriage was hit by an electric tram in Saint Petersburg. Source: Wikipedia * * * Nikolai Egorovich Makovsky (Russian painter) 1842 - 1886 Nikolai Egorovich Makovsky was the son of collector, Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky, who was one of the founders of the Moscow Art School. Nikolai had two brothers, Vladimir Makovsky and Konstantin Makovsky, and one sister, Alexandra Makovsky, all of whom were famous painters. Nikolai studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and travelled in Egypt. He was well-known for painting Egyptian street scenes. Source: Wikipedia * * * Vladimir Yegorovich Makovsky (Russian painter) 1846 - 1920 Makovsky was the son of collector, Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky, who was one of the founders of the Moscow Art School. Vladimir had two brothers, Nikolai Makovsky and Konstantin Makovsky, and one sister, Alexandra Makovsky, all of whom were famous painters. Makovsky's work was defined by a perpetual humor as well as blatant irony and scorn. Other works of his are profoundly socially-conscious. In them, Makovsky either criticizes the false sympathy of the aristocracy towards the poor, or draws attention to the oppression and persecution by the tsarist gendarmerie. Source: Wikipedia * * * Alexander Vladimirovich Makovsky (Russian painter) 1869 - 1924 Son of the celebrated Peredvizhnik Vladimir Makovsky, Alexander arrived at the banks of the Volga, earlier immortalised by Levitan, as an already mature artist. In the hard years after the Revolution, this small settlement and its picturesque surroundings which still retained features of the old merchant life became a bountiful source of inspiration, tinged with nostalgia. Here, during his summer migration from his job as head of the art department of the Russian Red Cross Society, Makovsky created a whole series of notable canvasses, halfgenre, half-landscape and saturated with light and colour, which have become one of the most brilliant episodes in his oeuvre. After a long break, the artist in his Volga paintings of the 1920s returns to painting large-scale, highly-populated compositions, and for these he produces a large number of carefully rendered studies portraying distant river vistas and individual protagonists – peasants, boatmen, merchants and those out strolling along the river bank. It is no coincidence that we sometimes encounter those same protagonists, depicted by Makovsky in his series of tempera works, Volga Types (1922), and in small oils such as Peasant with a Tobacco Pouch and Acquaintances (both 1921), The Mushroom Gatherer, and The Old Beekeeper (both 1922), in such major paintings as View of Plios, and many others: Market Day at Plios (1919–1923), Waiting for the Ferry (1920–1923), Street in Plios (1923), Easter Procession (1921–1923) and At the Ferry (1924). Most works in Makovsky’s Plios cycle have long since entered the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery and other leading museums of Russian art, thus the appearance on the market of a work of this quality can without doubt be considered a great rarity. Source: Wikipedia * * * Elena Luksh-Makovskaya (Russian painter and sculptor) 1878 - 1967 Elena is the daughter of Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky, (Russian painter) 1839 - 1915 and his second wife Julia Paulowna Letkovoy. Elena Luksch-Makovskaya travelled to Munich in 1898 to study in Anton Ažbe studio alongside Vasily Kandinsky, Alexei Jawlensky and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. She married the Austrian sculptor Richard Luksch (1872–1967) and moved to Vienna, where she was the first female member of the Vienna Secession and a participant in the pioneering design cooperative Wiener Kunst im Hause. Her technical aptitude owes much to her training in the 1890s at the St Petersburg Tenisheva Drawing School, the lessons of Ilya Repin at the Academy of Arts, and no doubt also to those of her father, Konstantin Makovsky. Source: Sotheby's Elena Luksch-Makowsky was a daughter of the famous Russian artist Konstantin Makovsky and a sister of prominent writer and art critic Sergei Makovsky. She studied under Ilya Repin and participated in Repin-organized exhibition in 1896 - 1897. In 1902 Makowsky married the Austrian sculptor Richard Luksch and moved first to Vienna and then to Hamburg where she took the German citizenship and taught at the Industrial Art School. She exhibited in Russia with "World of Arts", with "Garland" and at the Salon of Sergei Makovsky. Elena was the first woman to exhibit at the Viennese "Secession" in Austria and participated in multiple exhibitions in Germany, Hamburg. During the 1920s and 1930s she regularly exhibited at the Parisian Salons.
