[1] He displayed an early talent for art, but his father was opposed on the grounds that it would not be a secure way to make a living so, at the age of eleven, he was enrolled at the Konstantinov Land Surveying Institute [ru].

[2] The Institute was not to his liking and he was an indifferent student, so a family friend who was an amateur artist encouraged his father to send him to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MSPSA).

With a recommendation from Vasily Perov, he began auditing classes there in 1878; studying with Illarion Pryanishnikov and Evgraf Sorokin.

At that time he started work on a series of paintings devoted to "Pereselenchestvo [ru]", the process of resettling peasants to outlying, vacant areas (mostly in Siberia) in an attempt to ease overcrowding in the villages after the Emancipation reform of 1861.

[2] In 1903, he was one of the founders of the "Союз русских художников [ru]" (Union of Russian Artists), temporarily replacing the better-known "Mir Iskusstva".