At the beginning of the 19th century it was extremely difficult to find nude models for painting lessons. As a local history expert Nikolay Schegolkov was writing, Arzamas people were ‘brought up in proven faith, … untouched by the corrupting influence of the West’. This was the reason why at the final stage of their education students were painting not a nude model, but portraits and sketches of dressed people. In future it had an impact on their art, because although portrait as a separate genre was not taught by Stupin, the best works of Arzamas artists belong to this genre. 

 
Instead of independent development of the graduation work’s composition, students of the Arzamas School used to copy an engraving in the technique of oil painting. Among examples of such works there are two graduates’ paintings that are now part of the Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum collection: Saint Jerome in the Desert, a copy of an Augsburg engraving of the beginning of the 18th century depicting the painting by Jacopo Palma the Younger; and Lot and his Daughters painted after an engraving by Ivan Beresenev of the original painting by Louis Jean François Lagrenée. Nonetheless, Alexander Stupin achieved high results, and works of his students were often displayed at exhibitions in the Academy of Fine Arts and repeatedly awarded with prizes.