Yegor Yegorovich Meyer (Russian: Егор Егорович Мейер; (1820/1823,

Novgorod Veliky Novgorod ( ; , ; ), also known simply as Novgorod (), is the largest city and administrative centre of Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It is one of the oldest cities in Russia, being first mentioned in the 9th century. The city lies along the V ...

- 29 January 1867,

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

) was a Russian landscape painter and explorer who spent part of his career in Siberia.

Biography

In 1839, he began auditing classes at the

Imperial Academy of Arts The Imperial Academy of Arts, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was an art academy in Saint Petersburg, founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov, the founder of the Imperial Moscow University, under the name ''Academy of th ...

; notably the landscape painting workshops of Maxim Vorobiev.Brief biography
@ RusArtNet. After completing only one year, he had already received a commission to paint views of the

Alexander Palace The Alexander Palace (, ''Alexandrovskiy dvorets'', ) is a former imperial residence near the town of Tsarskoye Selo in Russia, on a plateau about south of Saint Petersburg. The Palace was commissioned by Catherine the Great in 1792. Due t ...

. From 1841 to 1842, he participated in a scientific expedition to the Altai and Sayan mountains led by the naturalist,

Pyotr Chikhachyov Pyotr Alexandrovich Chikhachyov, last name also spelled Chikhachev or Tchihatchev (; 23 December 1808 – 13 October 1890) was a Russian naturalist and geologist who was admitted into the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1876 as an honorary member ...

. The paintings he made won a silver medal at the academy in 1843. After 1844, he lived in

Odessa ODESSA is an American codename (from the German language, German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) coined in 1946 to cover Ratlines (World War II aftermath), Nazi underground escape-pl ...

.Brief biography
@ Irkipedia. Later that year, he was officially named an "Artist", given a gold medal by the academy and got married. He also received a stipend for studying abroad and went to Italy, but had to return in 1849 when all the academy's pensioners were recalled. To maintain his stipend, he travelled throughout Southern Russia, sending paintings to the academy, but it was not enough and, in 1851, he excused himself for not sending any because he had to sell them to help support his family. In 1853, after submitting work he had done in

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

, he was named an "Academician". Two years later, he moved to Siberia, settling in

Nikolayevsk-on-Amur Nikolayevsk-on-Amur () is a town in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia located on the Amur River close to its liman in the Pacific Ocean. Population: 17,815 (2024); History Medieval and early-modern history In the late Middle Ages, the people living al ...

, where he set up a small home and studio. While there, he painted works of an ethnographic nature and illustrated several books by

Richard Maack Richard Otto Maack (; 4 September 1825 – 25 November 1886) was a Russian naturalist, geographer, and anthropologist. He is most known for his exploration of the Russian Far East and Siberia, particularly the Ussuri and Amur River valleys. ...

, Leopold Schrenk,

Georg Wilhelm Timm Georg Wilhelm Timm, russified as Vasily Fyodorovich Timm (; 21 June 1820 – 19 April 1895), was a Baltic German painter, lithographer and ceramic designer, known for his genre and battle scenes. He was also the publisher of the '. Biography ...

and

Lev Sternberg Lev (Chaim-Leib) Yakovlevich Sternberg () ( – August 14, 1927) was a Russian and Soviet ethnographer of Jewish origin who from 1889 to 1897 studied the Nivkhs (Gilyaks), Oroks, and Ainu on Sakhalin and in Siberia for the American Museum of N ...

. He also painted the last picture of the Russian frigate, ''Pallada'' before it was

scuttled Scuttling is the act of deliberately sinking a ship by allowing water to flow into the hull, typically by its crew opening holes in its hull. Scuttling may be performed to dispose of an abandoned, old, or captured vessel; to prevent the vesse ...

by its own crew. In 1855, he helped repel a landing made by Anglo-French forces at De-Kastri Bay. Meyer-Irkutsk

From 1855 to 1858, he accompanied an expedition by the Russian Geographic Society, making sketches of the construction of the first Russian towns in East Siberia. In 1858, he was awarded the

Order of Saint Stanislaus The Order of Saint Stanislaus (, ), also spelled Stanislas, was a Polish order of knighthood founded in 1765 by King Stanisław August Poniatowski of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It remained under the Congress Poland, Kingdom of Pola ...

and the following year, became a Collegiate Assessor. In 1861, he served on the commission that helped establish the Sino-Russian border. In 1863, his health began to fail and he returned to Saint Petersburg, where he continued to paint scenes of the Amur territory to help support his daughters' artistic education. He died at a hospital in 1867.

References

External links

"Неизвестные автографы академика живописи Е. Мейера на Амуре"
by Vadim Popov @ Дебри-ДВ {{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer, Yegor 1820s births 1867 deaths People from Veliky Novgorod People from Novgorodsky Uyezd Russian people of German descent 19th-century painters from the Russian Empire Russian male painters Russian landscape painters 19th-century explorers from the Russian Empire 19th-century illustrators from the Russian Empire Recipients of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (House of Romanov)