He began his art studies with the well-known Ukrainian pedagogue and artist, Dmytro Bezperchy.

After 1885, he lived in Saint Petersburg, where he took private lessons from Ilya Repin.

From 1886 to 1887, he was an occasional student at the Imperial Academy of Arts and worked with Professor Pavel Chistyakov.

[1] He resigned from the Peredvizhniki in 1903 and, together with Apollinary Vasnetsov, Abram Arkhipov, Alexei Stepanov, Ilya Ostroukhov and others, became one of the founders of the "Union of Russian Artists", which existed until 1923.

He also worked as an illustrator for periodicals such as the Ежегодник императорских театров (Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters), Живописное обозрение стран света (Pictorial View of the World) and Всемирная иллюстрация (Worldwide Illustration).