Mission to China

After less than two years as a teacher, he volunteered for the fourteenth Russian Spiritual Mission to Beijing and, in 1857, became the mission's official artist.^[2] The mission was delayed by events related to the Taiping Rebellion, so he spent a year in Irkutsk. While there, he painted portraits of prominent Siberian statesmen such as Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky and Karl-Burgardt Wenzel [ru].

While in Beijing, his primary mission was replacing Albazinian icons that had been destroyed in 1685 by the Qing Army (and were destroyed again during the Cultural Revolution). In 1863, he was charged with delivering a diplomatic message to Admiral Popov in Shanghai.^[1]

Upon returning to Saint Petersburg in 1864, he mounted a major exhibition at the Academy, with genre scenes and portraits of Chinese officials and their families. He was also awarded the Order of Saint Stanislaus.^[1] Following that, he worked primarily as an icon painter, working in Kostroma, Novgorod, Vologda and Arzamas. In 1885, he did most of the decorative work for the newly rebuilt Church of the Intercession in Saratov. In 1890, he went to live there with his widowed sisters and wrote his memoirs.^[2] He died of paralysis after several trips to the village of Sleptsovka to make funeral arrangements for another sister.^[1]

Most of his church works were destroyed during the Soviet period. The current locations of all but two of the works he painted in China are unknown. In 1950, an unfinished posthumous portrait of Alexander Griboyedov was identified as his.