Mikhail Ivanovich Belsky

Portrait of the composer
Dmitry Bortniansky (1788)

His father, Ivan Ivanovich Belsky, was a history painter and Academician at the Imperial Academy of Arts.[1] In 1770, the Academy awarded him a silver medal for his outstanding classwork. His primary instructors there were Anton Losenko and Dmitry Levitzky.[2]

In 1773, together with the engraver, Gavriil Skorodumov, he was awarded a travel grant to study abroad, in London. They received 300 Rubles per year, and letters of recommendation.[2] When they arrived, they were placed under the patronage of Count Alexei Musin-Pushkin, the Russian Envoy. Classes at the Royal Academy of Arts were open to them, they were able to copy the Old Masters, attend lectures and travel throughout the provinces.[2]

In 1776, they were scheduled to continue their travels, but Skorodumov chose to remain in London. Belsky went to Paris and became a student of Jean-Baptiste Greuze in 1780, at his father's expense.[2]

Very little is known of his life beyond that point, except that he returned to Russia and worked as a portrait painter in St. Petersburg. Few of his paintings have been identified with any certainty and most are believed to be in the possession of their subject's families.

Primary sources

• Petrov, P. N. (1864). Сборник материалов для истории Императорской Санкт-Петербургской академии художеств за сто лет ее существования (in Russian). Vol. 1. Saint Petersburg: Gogenfelden and Co. pp. 126, 132, 133, 296, 297. OCLC 676719786.

Scholarly notes

• Cross, Anthony Glenn (1980). "By the Banks of the Thames": Russians in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners. pp. 211, 212, 213, 217, 218, 219, 306. ISBN 0-89250-085-9. OCLC 1148189047 – via the Internet Archive.
• Moiseeva, S. V., ed. (2019). Художники Бельские (exhibition catalogue) (in Russian). Saint Petersburg: Palace Editions. ISBN 978-5-93332-666-3. OCLC 1197715496.
• Nikulina, N. I. (May 1969). "«Портрет учителя с учениками» и его автор". Iskusstvo (in Russian). Moscow: Iskusstvo: 51–54.

Reference books

• Milner, John (1993). A Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Artists, 1420–1970. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club. p. 70. ISBN 1-85149-182-1. OCLC 29787870.