[2][unreliable source] His father was a Collegiate Registrar, a civil service rank that often served as postmasters.

In 1854, as a result of his father being reassigned, the family moved to the village of Sukhobuzimskoye, where he began his primary education.

[citation needed] In 1859, his father died of tuberculosis so the family returned to Krasnoyarsk and were forced to rent the second floor of their house to survive financially.

[citation needed] In 1877, he received a commission to paint murals at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (then still under construction), and he moved to Moscow.

In 1878, he married Elisabeth Charais (1858–1888), a French woman who was descended from the Decembrist, Pyotr Svistunov [ru], on her mother's side.

[citation needed] After that, he chose to remain in Moscow and began the series of historical paintings that would establish his reputation, starting with The Morning of the Streltsy Execution.

There, on the Ob River, he made sketches for one of his most familiar works, The Conquest of Siberia by Yermak Timofeyevich (an event in which some of his ancestors had participated).

A trip to Crimea for treatment in 1915 failed to ameliorate the problem, and he died early the following year after returning to Moscow.