Artist Maximov Vassily Maximovich comes from a peasant family. He began his career in painting with training at icon painting workshops. In 1863 he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts as a volunteer and completed the entire academic course in three years. During his studies, in 1864 and 1865, he was awarded small silver medals for his success in drawing and painting from nature. In 1865 he received a gold medal for the painting ‘Sick Child’. After the end of his studies at the Academy, Maksimov refused to participate in the competition for a large gold medal and a trip to study abroad. He motivated his refusal with the following: ‘My convictions force me not to go to the competition, I am against a trip abroad, because I want to study Russia and the poor Russian village first, which no one here knows; no one knows the village’s need and grief.’

After graduating from the Academy, the artist went to a village in the Tver province. The life and traditions of Russian peasants were not just objects for the artist’s description - they were his daily life. It is for this authenticity and closeness to the common people that the artist’s works were so highly appreciated by Ilya Efimovich Repin and Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy. The latter, examining one of Maximov’s paintings, said: ‘The people itself painted their picture’. It is true, because Maximov’s first spectators and critics were the peasants themselves. The artist has always listened carefully to their comments and advice.

The collector Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov appreciated the talent of the painter and bought his painting " A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding’ (1875). The author’s repetition of this picture is kept in the Zaraysk Kremlin.

The plot is based on a childhood memory from the artist’s life, when an uninvited guest suddenly came to the wedding of his elder brother Alexei. People began to whisper that it must be a sorcerer. Peasants have always taken many superstitions very seriously. The appearance of a sorcerer at a wedding could be both a good and a bad sign - everything very much depended on how the sorcerer behaved and what he would say to the young. That is why in the picture we see such a reaction from the guests: everyone looks at the newcomer in surprise and waits for what will happen next. The elders try to appease the sorcerer with bread and salt so that he would say kind words to the bride and groom. Using various artistic techniques: composition, unusual lighting, poses and facial expressions of the characters, the artist perfectly conveys the atmosphere of tense expectation in the air.

In case of the painter’s brother wedding, everything went well: the old man was given a cup of drink and a coin, and then left.