[3] From 1856 to 1866 he studied in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the classes of Evgraf Sorokin and Sergey Zaryanko.

Gostiny Dvor in Moscow, painted in the last year of education, straight away brought to him a wide reputation.

In this small canvas he gives an original solution of a theme of the humiliation of human dignity, callousness and cruelty in the world, where everything is bought and is sold.

After depicting the tipsy merchants, who with a jeer are compelled to dance under the concertina and a poor elderly official, the artist authentically demonstrates a whole gallery of the specimens of moral deformity and complacent caddishness.

From 1873 until his death he was a teacher in the MSoPSA and his apprentices were Konstantin Korovin,[4] Vitold Byalynitsky-Birulya, Mikhail Nesterov, Alexei Stepanov[5] and others.