Emmanuil Dmitriev-Mamonov

His father, Alexander, was an army officer and battle painter who, in 1820, was one of the founders of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts.

In 1840, he entered the law faculty at Moscow University, alternating classes there with studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts.

[1] In the 1850s, he became a full-time student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and, upon graduating, set himself up as a professional portrait painter and soon became very popular among the aristocracy.

Among those he portrayed were Konstantin Aksakov, Pyotr Kireevsky, Nikolay Yazykov, Nikolai Gogol and Aleksey Khomyakov, who became a close friend.

His first disagreement with his fellow Slavophiles came in 1863, when he took issue with their criticism of the January Uprising and called on the Tsar to give Poland its freedom.