He graduated from secondary school in 1871, then attended the Imperial Academy of Arts and took private watercolor lessons from Luigi Premazzi.

[1] From 1876 to 1886, he was married to a Swiss pianist named Maria Kind (1855-1909), but divorced her after she had an affair with the composer, Sergei Taneyev.

During times off from teaching, he continued to travel; visiting North Africa and taking a trip through Siberia, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, among other places.

He became Director of the Museum of Applied Arts (operated by the People's Commissariat of Trade and Industry) in 1918.

Two years later, he accompanied an expedition by the Petrograd Institute of Geology to the northern coast where he produced a series of paintings.