Vasily Kokorev

In 1857, he was co-founder of a joint stock company, concerned with food and other animal products then, together with Baron Nicolaus von Tornauw [de] and the entrepreneur Nikolai Novoselsky [ru], created the "Trans-Caspian Trade Partnership".

His contributions to establishing the Russian Steam Navigation and Trading Company led to his involvement in the building of oil barges.

He was a major contributor to the failed Balkan Mission of General Mikhail Chernyayev, just prior to the Russo-Turkish War.

He asserted that Russia should find its own economic forms, rather than borrowing those of Western Europe and that Germany was its only reliable ally.

In the mid-1850s, he began collecting paintings by both Russian and foreign artists and, in 1861, he had a gallery built in central Moscow to house them, designed by Ivan Chernik [ru].

It was opened to the public in 1862, with eights rooms of art, a large lecture hall, and the "Tivoli" restaurant; a buffet which was also a tavern.

More than forty of the canvases were by Karl Bryullov, including copies of two of his works in the Imperial Collection, made by one of his students.

Among the numerous artists who stayed there were Pavel Chistyakov, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Valentin Serov, Isaac Brodsky and Ilya Repin; after whom the facility was named in 1964.