Arkhip Kuindzhi was one of the most talented and famous Russian landscape artists of the 20th century. He was born in Mariupol to a cobbler’s family, became an orphan at an early age and was taken into his father’s relatives care. Kuindzhi attended classes at the city school, but his aptitude for learning turned out to be rather limited. What he was really entranced with was painting. Kuindzhi painted on everything within his reach: walls and fences, shreds of paper.

The young painter’s talent was noticed by a bread merchant, in whose shop Kuindzhi was doing some menial job. Kuindzhi took his advice and went to Crimea, where Ivan Aivazovsky had residence – he walked all the way to Feodosia. However, the famous marine artist was not impressed by Kuindzhi painting skills and charged him with nothing but preparing materials and painting fences.

In 1870s the Kuindzhi’s ‘romantic’ style finally took shape. His dark and mysterious paintings as if glowing from the inside had always had both audience and critics fascinated. In the 1880s after the roaring success of Moon Over Dnepr River the artist, to everybody’s surprise, became an anchoret and spent almost twenty years in seclusion refusing access to his works to anyone.