[3] In 1819, Grigory Chernetsov, encouraged by Pavel Svinyin, who was earlier travelled to Lukh, arrived in Saint Petersburg where he wanted to enroll in the Imperial Academy of Arts.

In 1822, he was granted the small Silver Medal for his drawings and accepted to the academy, where he studied under Alexander Varnek and Maxim Vorobiev.

In particular, his best known painting, The military parade on October 6, 1831 in Tsaritsyn Lug, Saint Petersburg incorporates portraits of a number of his famous contemporaries, including Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky, Ivan Krylov, and Nikolay Gnedich.

They also produced a 700 metres (2,300 ft) long panorama of the banks of the Volga which eventually was accepted as a gift by Nicholas I.

In the 1840s, they travelled over Italy and the Middle East, but attempts to sell the resulting lithographs in Russia were highly unsuccessful.