Selected dates:

May 14, 1869

Born in the family of a poor Minsk artisan.

1883

He was sent to study in Kiev on the money of a philanthropist. The portrait of the writer Turgenev, painted by a young artist, was "fault" for everything, which struck the director of the Minsk gymnasium.

1887

He could not enter the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, because of the Pale of Settlement, which forbade most Jews to settle outside the western outskirts of the tsarist empire. Jacob leaves first for Warsaw , where he takes lessons from the famous portrait painter Leopold Horowitz, and then to Paris , where he gets stuck for a whole seven-year period. Here he improves his skills in the private art school of Rodolphe Julian.

1895

Having a rich European experience behind him, he nevertheless returns to Minsk, dreaming of continuing his education with famous compatriots. And, finally, Kruger is enrolled as a volunteer in the Higher Art School of the Academy , in the workshop of Vladimir Makovsky.

early 1900

By this time, he had become one of the most successful and fashionable portrait painters in Minsk, carried out numerous private commissions, and was fascinated by the idea of his own school. At first, he managed to organize only drawing and painting courses.

1906

In Minsk, in a two-story stone mansion on Petropavlovskaya Street, the "Drawing School of the Artist Kruger" was opened. Teenagers from numerous towns and villages flocked here - Ivan Akhremchik, Mikhail Stanyuta, Mikhail Kikoin, Chaim Soutine - these are just some of the "star" names whose talent found support in these walls.

1914 - 1921

The artist and his family move to Kazan , where he is mainly engaged in teaching work. He also continues to write there. Portraits of relatives and friends, genre paintings, distinguished not only by attention to detail, but also by extraordinary accuracy. It is generally accepted that one of the best paintings by Yakov Kruger - "The Girl in Red " was written off from Sophia's daughter. Posed for the artist and his wife named Fruma-Zlata. But the portraits of two Belarusian classics, Yakub Kolas and Yanka Kupala, made already in Soviet times, brought him the greatest fame.

1930s

The models of Kruger are the heroes of the new time - proletarian writers and poets, scientists and politicians, leaders of production. Having won official recognition from the authorities, Yakov Kruger became one of those who created the style of Soviet ceremonial painting .

1940

Four months before his death, he was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the BSSR . In 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began, most of Kruger's paintings, those that were kept in the State Art Gallery of Belarus, perished, and the artist's studio burned down. Miraculously, a dozen and a half canvases survived, which museum workers managed to evacuate to Saratov. In 1947 they returned to Minsk, taking their place in the halls of the National Art Museum. It could not be otherwise, because Yakov Kruger always returns to his homeland.