Artist Leonid Mikhailovich Brailovsky. Unapproved design 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 head (mayor); his mother came from the Sedlyarevsky line of Little Russian nobility. After graduating from a classical gymnasium, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. He studied painting and architecture, specializing in landscape painting. His mentor 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 St. Petersburg in the architecture class. Owing to his outstanding course performance, he became an Academy pensioner, and was granted the honorary right to travel at state expense in 1895–1897 on a foreign tour—to Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Spain, highly exotic countries where he found new subjects. In a way, they also made him famous.
Brailovsky also visited France, Germany, Austria, and England, where he again made 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 his trip abroad, were acquired by the Museum of the Academy of Arts, the Institute of Civil Engineers, and the Russian Museum. Some of his works even ended up in 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 Academie R. Julien in Paris. This gave him certain contacts and knowledge of some Western European art methods.
After returning home, L. M. Brailovsky obtained a professorship at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and at the same time began teaching at the Stroganov School. He also produced stage work for the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre.
In Crimea, the Brailovskys became closely acquainted with A. P. Chekhov’s sister, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova, who not far from them, also in Miskhor, bought herself a small dacha in order to be closer to the writer’s White Dacha, which was in Yalta.
After the writer’s death, an original memorial “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 Moscow. In Soviet times, the memorial and the fence, also made from Brailovsky’s sketches, were restored and brought into 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 well-known 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 building 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. In a few months, L. M. Brailovsky painted 12 watercolors of high artistic quality, capturing in the smallest details all the luxury of the recently restored rooms of the old Russian residence. These watercolor albums, astonishing in their refined precision of detail, could even then, without any exaggeration, stand alongside 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 (nee Schmidt), first to Latvia; later he lived in Constantinople. Via Constantinople he ended up in 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 reunited 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. It became the basis of a collection of 100 paintings and 20 plans depicting monuments of church painting and architecture of Kiev, Novgorod, Moscow, Rostov, Suzdal, etc. The Brailovskys’ apartment in Rome became a kind of center of Russian life. The home regularly hosted gatherings for compatriots, tea parties were arranged, and endless intelligentsia conversations took place.
He exhibited in many cities and, together with his wife, 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.