Fedotov, Pavel

Fedotov, Pavel (b Moscow, 22 June [4 July] 1815; d St Petersburg, 14 [26] Nov. 1852).
Russian painter. He was an army officer until 1844, when he resigned his commission to concentrate on art, in which he was mainly self-taught (although he attended classes at the St Petersburg Academy). In his brief professional career he became one of the most popular Russian painters of the day with amusingly satirical pictures mocking the vanities and pretensions of middle-class society. His most famous painting is The Major's Courtship (1848, Tretyakov Gal., Moscow; later version in Russian Mus., St Petersburg), showing a middle-aged army officer, aristocratic but penniless, calling at the house of a rich merchant to seek marriage with his daughter. The main influences on Fedotov's work were 17th-century Dutch and Flemish genre paintings and the engravings of Hogarth (he has even been called ‘the Russian Hogarth’, but the English artist's work is much more biting in its moralistic purpose). Fedotov also painted portraits. In his last years his work expressed disenchantment with life, and he died in a lunatic asylum aged only 37.