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Russian: 11 May [O.S. 29 April] 1811 - 30 January [O.S. 18 January] 1893) was a Russian painter, Major General and administrator.
Grigory Gagarin was born in Saint Petersburg to the noble Rurikid princely Gagarin family. His father, Prince Grigory Ivanovich Gagarin (Saint Petersburg, 17 March 1782 - Tegernsee, 12 February 1837), was a Russian diplomat in France and later the ambassador to Italy. His father married in Saint Petersburg in 1809 his mother Yekaterina Petrovna Sojmonova (Saint Petersburg, 23 May 1790 - Moscow, 27 February 1873). Thus until the age 13 the boy was with his family in Paris and Rome and then studied in the collegium Tolomei in Siena. Grigory did not receive a formal artistic education, but took private lessons from the famous Russian painter Karl Briullov who at that time lived in Italy.
In 1832 he returned to Saint Petersburg, became acquainted with Alexander Pushkin and illustrated his works The Queen of Spades and The Tale of Tsar Saltan.He also became close to the opposition Circle of Sixteen and Mikhail Lermontov.
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