He graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts (1879) with the title of first-class artist and the gold medal "For a very good knowledge of architecture."

Foreign pensioner of the Imperial Academy of Arts (from 1882 to 1888) in Italy (Venice, Florence and Rome), in Paris, in Munich and Vienna.

In 1888 he was appointed associate professor of the academy and returned to Russia to study the monuments of ancient Russian art and architecture.

The result of the research is the scientific work “Monuments of ancient Russian architecture within the Kaluga province”.

In the last years of his life, he led the scientific work at the State Academy of the History of Material Culture in Leningrad.