Artist Leonid Mikhailovich Brailovsky. An unapproved design sketch for the “300 Years of the House of Romanov” series.
He was born in Kharkov in 1871 into an Orthodox noble family. His father, Mikhail Brailovsky, was the city mayor; his mother came from the Sedlyarevsky family of Little Russian nobility. After completing a classical gymnasium, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. He studied painting and architecture, specializing in landscape painting. The mentor of the future architect during those and subsequent years of study was the then still young A. N. Beketov, later a professor, academician, and a leading teacher of an entire generation of Soviet architects.
During his studies he was repeatedly awarded for academic success: in 1890 he received a small silver medal, in 1892 a large silver medal, and in 1893 a small gold medal. For a design of the imperial stables he was awarded a gold medal.
In 1894 he successfully graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in the architecture class. In view of his outstanding course performance, he became an Academy pensioner, and was granted the honorary right to travel abroad at state expense in 1895–1897—to Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Spain, highly exotic countries in which he found new subjects. In a sense, they made him famous.
Brailovsky also visited France, Germany, Austria, and England, where he again produced architectural sketches and measurements that became part of his creative report on the two-year voyage. Some of his architectural watercolors, sent as a report on the foreign trip, were acquired by the Museum of the Academy of Arts, the Institute of Civil Engineers, and the Russian Museum. Some of his works even made it into the Byzantine Museum at the Sorbonne, which testifies to the maturity of his painting, as well as to undeniable commercial success.
Abroad, Brailovsky attended the studios of R. Bompiani in Rome and the Académie R. Julian in Paris. This gave him certain connections and knowledge of some Western European art methods.
After returning home, L. M. Brailovsky received a professorship at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and at the same time began teaching at the Stroganov School. He also carried out stage work at the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre.
In Crimea, the Brailovskys became closely acquainted with Anton Chekhov’s sister, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova, who not far from them, also in Miskhor, likewise bought a small dacha in order to be closer to the writer’s own White Dacha, which was located in Yalta.
After the writer’s death in Moscow, an original grave monument—a golbets with three small domes and a cast cross with enamel and a crucifix—was made to Brailovsky’s design and installed on the classic’s grave. In Soviet times, the monument and the fence, also made to Brailovsky’s sketches, were restored and put in proper condition by decision of the Ministry of Culture. It should be noted that the grave itself had to be moved from one place to another.
At that time, the Academy of Arts commissioned Brailovsky to copy the frescoes of the Novgorod Church of the Savior on Nereditsa. His work was used by the famous Byzantinist Millet in his book published at the Sorbonne.
In 1916, Leonid Mikhailovich Brailovsky was awarded the title of Academician of the Academy of Arts. He became the last person to receive this title during the imperial period of Russian history.
As a first step toward establishing a creative career no longer tied to apprenticeship, the Academy’s top leadership proposed that he move to Moscow to carry out a major commission: creating watercolor images of the interiors of the Yusupov Palace. Over several months, L. M. Brailovsky painted 12 watercolors of high artistic quality, depicting in the finest detail all the luxury of the recently restored rooms of the ancient Russian residence. These watercolor albums, striking in their refined precision of detail, could already then, without any exaggeration, stand in the same rank as similar works by his predecessors depicting the interiors of Russian palaces and mansions.
After the October Revolution, in 1919, he emigrated together with his wife, the artist Rimma Nikitichna Brailovskaya (née Schmidt), first to Latvia; later he lived in Constantinople. Via Constantinople he made his way to Serbia, where Brailovsky held the post of chief artist of the Royal Theatres in Belgrade for three years.
In 1925 he moved to Rome. Under the influence of the priests A. Sipyagin and M. Nedotochin, Brailovsky was reconciled with the Catholic Church. In 1932, an exhibition was organized of 40 paintings by the Brailovskys depicting monuments of Russian religious art. This collection was presented to Pius XI. The collection formed the basis of a set of 100 paintings and 20 plans depicting monuments of church painting and architecture of Kyiv, Novgorod, Moscow, Rostov, Suzdal, and so on. The Brailovskys’ apartment in Rome became a kind of center of Russian life. Gatherings for compatriots were held regularly in the home, tea was served, and endless intelligentsia conversations took place.
He exhibited in many cities; together with his wife he held two solo exhibitions in Paris and the Vatican. With the participation of Princess M. Radziwill, an illustrated catalog of the exhibited paintings was published, and three small albums of corresponding postcards were issued.
He died in 1937 in Rome.