The “guitarist” type in the art of Tropinin came to personify a very special image of the representative of town culture. The emotional candour and free demeanour of the subject are typical of the Romantic type of artistic vision. The artist created several copies and variations of this painting. Vladimir Ivanovich Morkov (1800–1864): Virtuoso guitarist, musicologist. He wrote books on the history of opera, how to play the seven-string guitar and other works.

Tropinin Vasiliy

Tropinin, Vasily Andreyevich
1776, Karpovo (Novgorod Province) -1857, Moscow
Portraitist, genre painter, landscapist, draughtsman. Serf of Count Minich and then Count Morkov. External student at the Imperial Academy of Arts (from 1804). Called home by his owner, worked as a serf painter in the Ukraine and Moscow. Freed from serfdom and nominated to the Imperial Academy of Arts (1823). Academician (1824). Mostly worked in Moscow, influencing the Moscow school of painting. Painted portraits of such contemporaries as Alexander Pushkin and single-figure genre compositions. Contributed to many exhibitions in Moscow and St Petersburg.