Ivan Kalganov (?-1882)

‘The Russian pearl’, ‘the second Hoggarth’, ‘a great talent’ – in such words an outstanding gift of Ivan Kalganov was described by his contemporaries.

Kalganov lived in the town of Turinsk and had no regular artistic education, but his natural gift attracted attention of the merchant and philanthropist N. Chukmaldin, who helped Kalganov to move to Tyumen. In Tyumen Kalganov created a number of samples of the Russian genre painting. A characteristic feature of his style was a grotesque image of a provincial town, often veiled with tragic motives. His pictures could have illustrated the plays by Ostrovski, or the novels by Saltykov-Shedrin. The majority of his works depicted really existing and well-known people. Among them were Head of the town Loginov who brought to ruin a lot of citizens, and members of the Tyumen liberal-democratic circle, who were depicted as protagonists of Nekrassov’s poem ‘Who lives better in Russia?’

Chukmaldin sent I. Kalganov to Moscow to study at the Arts college, but Kalganov’s addiction to alcohol almost set to naught his career. Kalganov came back to Tyumen, and died in 1882. His paintings were given by Nikolai Chukmaldin to the collection of the museum at the Vocational college. Today one can see Kalganov’s paintings at the Tyumen Arts museum.