Kapiton Zelentsov

During the Napoleonic Wars he drew caricatures and popular patriotic prints while honing his skills by copying the old masters in the Hermitage.

[1] In 1817, he was involved in creating The Magic Lamp or a View of St. Petersburg Traders, for which he supplied forty etchings of scenes from everyday life.

During the 1830s, many of his paintings and lithographs were used to illustrate the works of Faddei Bulgarin, Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Zagoskin.

[2] In 1833, he was awarded the title "Academician of Perspective Painting" for his work "The Studio of Pyotr Basin".

Many of his interior portraits are considered to be among the best of the genre, following Venetsianov's belief that they too constitute "painting from nature".