Mikhail Ivanovich Belsky

Mikhail Ivanovich Belsky (Russian: Михаил Иванович Бельский; 1753, St. Petersburg - 29 May 1794, St. Petersburg) was a Russian Classical painter, commonly known for his portraits made during Catherine the Great's reign.

His father, Ivan Ivanovich Belsky, was a history painter and Academician at the Imperial Academy of Arts.^[1] In 1770, the Academy awarded him a silver medal for his outstanding classwork. His primary instructors there were Anton Losenko and Dmitry Levitzky.^[2]

In 1773, together with the engraver, Gavriil Skorodumov, he was awarded a travel grant to study abroad, in London. They received 300 Rubles per year, and letters of recommendation.^[2] When they arrived, they were placed under the patronage of Count Alexei Musin-Pushkin, the Russian Envoy. Classes at the Royal Academy of Arts were open to them, they were able to copy the Old Masters, attend lectures and travel throughout the provinces.^[2]

In 1776, they were scheduled to continue their travels, but Skorodumov chose to remain in London. Belsky went to Paris and became a student of Jean-Baptiste Greuze in 1780, at his father's expense.^[2]

Very little is known of his life beyond that point, except that he returned to Russia and worked as a portrait painter in St. Petersburg. Few of his paintings have been identified with any certainty and most are believed to be in the possession of their subject's families.

As of the early 21st century, Belsky's surviving body of work is comprised of only a small number of works present in public museums across post-Soviet nations. Among these, the 1788 portrait of composer Dmitry Bortniansky, in the Tretyakov Gallery, is the most notable.

Primary sources

• Petrov, Pyotr N. (1864). Сборник материалов для истории Императорской Санкт-Петербургской академии художеств за сто лет ее существования (in Russian). Vol. 1. Saint Petersburg: Gogenfelden and Co. pp. 126, 132, 133, 296, 297. OCLC 676719786.

Scholarly notes

• Cross, Anthony Glenn (1980). "By the Banks of the Thames": Russians in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners. pp. 211, 212, 213, 217, 218, 219, 306. ISBN 0-89250-085-9. OCLC 1148189047 – via the Internet Archive.
• Moiseyeva, Svetlana V.; et al. (2019). Russian Museum, St. Petersburg (ed.). Художники Бельские (exhibition catalogue) (in Russian). Saint Petersburg: Palace Editions. ISBN 978-5-93332-666-3. OCLC 1197715496.
• Nikulina, N. I. (May 1969). "«Портрет учителя с учениками» и его автор". Iskusstvo (in Russian). Moscow: Iskusstvo Publishing House. pp. 51–54.

Reference books

• Milner, John (1993). A Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Artists, 1420–1970. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club. p. 70. ISBN 1-85149-182-1. OCLC 29787870.

• Mikhail Ivanovich Belsky on the Russian Academy of Arts' official website (in Russian)
• Portrait of the History and Geography Teacher Baudouin with Two Academy of Arts Pupils of the First and Third Grades, 1773 on the Virtual Russian Museum (in Russian)
• Dmitry Bortnyansky, 1788 on My Tretyakovka (in Russian)