The tragic actor Vasily Karatygin (1802–1853) was his brother.

[1] Karatygin debuted on stage in 1823 and rose to fame performing in Alexander Griboyedov's Woe from Wit (the parts of Zagoretsky, Repetilov and Chatsky).

From 1832 to 1838 he was head of the Drama department in the Saint Petersburg Theatre College, where he discovered and tutored several future Russian stage stars, including Alexander Martynov [ru].

In the 1860s and 1870s he wrote a series of short memoirs on the history of the Russian theatre.

Edited and previewed by his son, Pyotr Karatygin's Notes were serialized by Russkaya Starina in 1872–1879, to much critical acclaim.