Albert Nikolaïevitch Benois 1852-1936

Born in Saint Petersburg, Albert Benois came from a prestigious dynasty of artists. The son of the Imperial Court architect Nicolas Leontievitch Benois (1813-1898), he was the elder brother of the painter and stage designer Alexandre Benois (1870-1960) and the uncle of the celebrated painter Zinaïda Serebriakova (1884-1967). In 1871, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts, pursuing a dual course of study in architecture and watercolor, notably under the Italian painter Luigi Premazzi.

After earning his architecture degree in 1877, he turned toward watercolor painting, a discipline to which he devoted himself fully from 1879. The following year, he co-founded the Circle of Russian Watercolorists alongside painters Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Kryzhitsky. He favored this medium during the many formative journeys he undertook in Italy, France, and Spain between 1883 and 1885. At the same time, he exhibited his watercolors in Saint Petersburg and was awarded the title of Academician in 1884.

Upon his return, he embarked on a distinguished career within the Academy. He became a professor of watercolor in 1885, served continuously on the Academy’s council from 1894 to 1905, and assumed the directorship of the Russian Museum from 1895. A skilled illustrator, he also contributed regularly to the art journal Mir Iskusstva from 1903 onward.

While his work gave prominence to landscapes, he also sought to capture scenes of rural life, documenting his travels across the Russian countryside, Siberia, the ports of the Neva and Venice, the Gulf of Finland, as well as regions of Asia and North Africa. Renowned for his delicate realism and sensitive handling of light, his palette evokes a certain poetry reminiscent of William Turner’s graphic expression.

Following the 1917 Revolution, which brought the end of the tsarist regime, Albert Benois became director of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Petrograd. In 1924, he went into exile in France and settled in Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, where he spent his final years, joined by his daughter, the singer Maria Tcherepnin.