1870

March: is awarded first prize (of the 1869 competition) by the Society for the Encouragement of Artists for his picture Forest Stream. July: goes to Nizhni-Novgorod (now Gorky) to paint water-colour views of the city, commissioned by the local community (these water-colours are at present in the Russian Museum, Leningrad). October: along with Vasily Perov, Alexei Savrasov, Ivan Kram-skoi, Nikolai Gay, Lev Kamenev and other found er-members signs the Charter of the Society for Circulating Art Exhibitions (1870 - 1923), a major creative association that brought together most of the democratic realist artists of the time. The Society's members strove to popularize their art, and to turn it into an active force in the struggle for social progress. Organizing annual exhibitions in St. Petersburg and Moscow, they would then take them to other cities, hence the word "circulating" in the Society's name (the members themselves were usually referred to as "the Itinerants" or Peredvizhniki).