A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1870), he was elected its full member in 1893. He lived in Kyiv from 1879 and taught at the Kyiv Drawing School (1880–1900) and (from 1901) in the Kyiv Art School. He took part in the restoration of the medieval frescoes in the Saint Cyril's Monastery. In his work he was close to the Peredvizhniki.