Khrutsky Ivan Fomich (1810-1885) Russian painter, portrait painter, master of still life and landscape. Born in 1810 in the family of a Greek Catholic priest from an old family of the Belarusian small-local gentry of the coat of arms "Leliva". At the age of ten, his parents sent their son to Polotsk, where the boy entered a higher PR school. The monastic Catholic order was engaged in Christian education and training of youth. In it, Ivan received an excellent education. At the Lyceum, he showed great interest in drawing.
In 1827 he arrived in St. Petersburg. In the capital until 1833. There he was enrolled in the famous Imperial Academy of Arts, worked as an apprentice to the English landscape painter George Doe, who taught him various secrets of artistic skill.
In 1833 Khrutsky entered the Imperial Academy of Arts as an "outsider" student. He studied in the landscape workshop of Mikhail Vorobyov, in addition to this he attended the portrait class of Alexander Varnek.
In 1836, Khrutsky was awarded a large silver medal by the Academic Council for his painting Flowers and Fruits. In the same year he was awarded the title of a free artist. Khrutsky′s painting "The Old Woman Knitting a Stocking" (1838) is close in style to the works of artists who did not have an academic education, to the paintings of Alexei Venetsianov and Vasily Tropinin. In the same year as an artist, he graduated from the Academy and received the title of a free artist.
In 1838 Ivan Khrutsky was awarded a small gold medal for the still life "Flowers and Fruits".
In 1839, Khrutsky was awarded the title of academician "for his excellent work in portraiture, landscape painting, and especially in painting fruits and vegetables".
In 1839, due to the death of his father, Ivan Fomich Khrutsky left St. Petersburg.
In 1844, the artist purchased the Zakharnichi estate near Polotsk, where he built a house and laid a garden according to his own design.
From 1845 to 1855, Khrutsky completed a large number of works on the orders of his patron, the Lithuanian Metropolitan Joseph Semashko. He painted icons for the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Kovno, for the Church of St. Joseph the Betrothed in Trinopol, for the cave church of the Three Martyrs in Vilna. Over the years, the artist painted many portraits of spiritual leaders of the Greco-Uniate Church of the Russian Empire, family portraits, the interiors of his estate, city and country landscapes, iconostases for Uniate churches.
Ivan Fomich Khrutsky died in 1885 and was buried in the family vault on the estate of Zakharnichi.