Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy (1837 – 1887) Russian painter, famous mainly as a portraitist. He also was an art critic. Kramskoy was the intellectual leader of the Russian democratic art movement 1860-1880. 
In 1872, Kramskoy painted his masterpiece Christ in the Desert, and in 1873 the Portrait of Leo Tolstoy.
Kramskoy was a fascinating, driven, exquisitely talented man. He acutely and actively reacted to the most important events surrounding him and tried to serve his people with his art. He is meaningful not only as an artist, but as the man who laid the way to the flourishing of Russian art represented by Ilya Repin, Serov, Surikov, Vasnetsov and other outstanding Russian masters.