ANTROPOV, Alexyei Petrovich. in-trii pof, a Russian painter, a pupil of A. Matvyeyev, of the icon painter Vishnyakov and of L. Car ravac: b. 14 March 1716; d. 12 June 1795. A prominent "Elizabethan," a master of design and of perspective and in several respects a person of no ordinary calibre, his special and particular merit was that independence of char acter which prompted the establishment of his own school of painting—a school that counter balanced the official academy and produced one of the greatest of Russian painters, Levitzky. eThe descendants of the latter," writes A. Ben ois in The Russian School of Painting' (New York 1916), shave to this very day preserved memories of Antropov, as of an independent man who held in disdain the official artistic world and warned his young pupils against the pernicious influence of the Academy)) He began his quest of an artistic education when only 16 years old, in studios of different Russian and foreign painters, and again, when Rotari came to Russia about the middle of the 18th century, gladly availed himself of the opportunity to assimilate and make his own the firm and lucid manner of that Italian master; for the inde pendence he had asserted and sustained against academic prejudice was not based on obstinacy or complacent self-esteem. It is in the manner
perfected under Rotari's influence that An tropov's two best portraits are executed — the portrait in the Tretyakov or Treliakof Gallery (identity of sitter unknown) and the portrait of the Countess Rumyantzev in the Museum of Alexander III. The latter work, dated 1764, is most characteristic. Incomparably weaker are his portraits of the czars, for the simple reason that Antropov, when painting these, was obliged to have recourse to data supplied by other peo ple. These are not afrom life; and so rather helplessly the artist, unpracticed in this particu lar form of invention, "heaped up in these por traits all sorts of details') borrowed from Tocque, Grot and Develis. By Antropov are also various paintings of sacred subjects for the Empress and for many churches (the icons pre served in the Church of Saint Andrew at Kiev being of special interest) ; a full-length portrait of Czar Peter III, and a portrait of Catharine II in coronation robes.