High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (Russian: March 17, 1856 - April 14, 1910, all n.s.) is usually regarded amongst the greatest Russian painters of the Symbolist movement. In reality, he deliberately stood aloof from contemporary art trends, so that the origin of his unusual manner should be sought in the Late Byzantine and Early Renaissance painting. Vrubel was born in Omsk, Russia, into a military lawyer's family. His mother died when he was three years old. And though he graduated from the Faculty of Law at St Petersburg University in 1880, his father had recognized his talent for art and had made sure to provide, through numerous tutors, what proved to be a sporadic education in the subject. The next year he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he studied under direction of Pavel Chistyakov. Even in his earliest works, he exhibited striking talent for drawing and a highly idiosyncratic outlook. Although he still relished academic monumentality, he would later develop a penchant for fragmentary composition and an "unfinished touch."
