The Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts houses a portrait of Maria Savina, an actress of the Imperial Theaters, by the famous Russian painter Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy.

Ivan Kramskoy was born into a petit-bourgeois family in the Voronezh Governorate and enjoyed painting since early childhood. In 1857, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Reluctant to follow the Academy’s strict rules and wishing to stay true to himself, in 1863, Ivan Kramskoy headed the famous “Revolt of the Fourteen”, when a group of graduates refused to work with the suggested mythological subject as their graduation project. After the rebels left the Academy of Arts, Kramskoy founded and headed the Artel of Artists. Thanks to his organizational skills and a sincere desire to contribute to the development of Russian realist painting, in 1871, Kramskoy became one of the founders and ideological leaders of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions.

Ivan Kramskoy created many portraits, including those of Russian artists and intellectuals, conveying his ideas about spiritual beauty and ideals. In the 1870s and 1880s, Ivan Kramskoy was a popular portraitist in St. Petersburg.

For a long time, the woman in the displayed portrait remained unidentified. A similar portrait, also signed by Ivan Kramskoy, is kept at the Odessa Fine Arts Museum. However, in the 1990s, the employees of the Odessa Museum questioned the authenticity of the painter’s signature. They suggested that the “Portrait of an Unknown Woman” from their collection could have been painted by the artist’s daughter Sophia Junker-Kramskaya. The catalog of the 1897 Odessa Art Exhibition features a portrait of the actress Maria Savina by Sophia Junker-Kramskaya. The artist’s daughter, who had taken lessons from her father, could have copied his work, including the signature “I. Kramskoy”. To determine the identity of the woman depicted in the portrait, the employees of the Odessa Museum conducted an investigation: by comparing photos of Maria Savina and the portrait of an unknown woman, they confirmed the similarities between the two images. Therefore, the Nizhny Tagil Museum also houses a portrait of the actress Maria Savina.

Ivan Kramskoy painted the displayed portrait of the actress Maria Savina when she had already been a star of the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg for many years.