Isaac Ilyich Levitan was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the "mood landscape".

The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, also known by the acronym MUZHVZ, was one of the largest educational institutions in Russia. The school was formed by the 1865 merger of a private art college, established in Moscow in 1832, and the Palace School of Architecture, established in 1749 by Dmitry Ukhtomsky. By the end of the 19th-century, it vied with the state-run St. Petersburg Academy of Arts for the title of the largest art school in the country. In the 20th century, art and architecture separated again, into the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow and the Moscow Architectural Institute ; the latter occupies the historical School buildings in Rozhdestvenka Street.