LEONID PASTERNAK

1862	Born April 4, in Odessa, to Jewish parents. The young Leonid Pasternak develops an early interest in drawing, despite his parents’ disapproval.
1879	Begins lessons at the Odessa School of Drawing.
1881	Enters the medical school of Moscow University, in the hope of also studying at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
1882	Still unable to study at the Moscow School of Painting, takes private lessons with the academician Professor E. Sorokin.
1883	Abandons medicine for law and transfers to the University at Odessa, which permits him to travel abroad. Attends Munich Academy of Art.
1885	Completes law degree and one year of military service in Odessa. Meets Rosalia Kaufmann, the pianist.
1888	Paints a large-scale genre painting, A Letter from Home, which is purchased by Pavel Tretyakov for his Moscow gallery. It is exhibited at the Wanderers’ exhibition and favourably reviewed.
1889	Marries Rosalia Kaufmann; they move to Moscow. Becomes acquainted with the younger painters Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin, and others in the circle of Vasilii Polenov, a member of the Wanderers group. Pasternak also meets Ilia Repin, the leading realist painter. Works on the new review, The Artist, and later becomes its art director. Establishes his own drawing school, based on the teaching methods of drawing from life used in Munich and Paris. Visits Paris, where he sees the work of the French Impressionists.
1890	Son Boris is born.
1892	The North magazine commissions him to illustrate Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
1893	Meets Tolstoy. Second son, Alexander, is born.
1894	Joins the faculty of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
1897	Tolstoy invites him to illustrate Resurrection. Exhibits with the World of Art group in St. Petersburg.
1900	Visits Paris, where his canvas, Students Before the Examination, is acquired by the Musée du Luxembourg (it now hangs in the Musée d’Orsay). This painting and his drawings for Resurrection are exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition. In Moscow, his daughter Josephine is born. Pasternak helps to found the group called the Thirty-Six Artists, forerunner of the Union of Russian Artists.
1902	Second daughter, Lydia, is born.
1903	Exhibits at the first Union of Russian Artists show, in Moscow.
1904	Invited to organize the art section of the international exhibition of art and industry in Düsseldorf. Visits Venice.
1905	Elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. The abortive Revolution of 1905 closes the Moscow School; with his family he spends several months in Berlin, where he gets to know Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, and other German Impressionists.
1907	Travels in Holland, Belgium and England.
1910	Tolstoy dies. His widow, Sofia Andreyevna, summons Pasternak to make a final, deathbed drawing of him at the railway station of Astapovo, where he died.
1912	Visits Germany and Italy.
1914-18	First World War.
1914	Lithograph, The Wounded Soldier (sales to go to the support of the wounded), is a great popular success.
1917	February Revolution; October Bolshevist coup captures the Winter Palace.
1918-20	Civil War in Russia.
1921	Moves with his wife and two daughters to Berlin, where he lives and works until 1938. His two sons remain in Moscow.
1924	Travels in Egypt and Palestine.
1927	First solo exhibition at Galerie Hartberg, Berlin.
1932	Second solo exhibition at Galerie Hartberg, accompanied by the publication of a monograph on his work by the art critic Max Osborn.
1938	Visits London and prepares for return to Moscow.
1939	Death of Rosalia in London. Britain declares war on Germany. Pasternak moves to Oxford to live with his daughter Lydia.
1945	Dies in Oxford on May 31, aged 83.

MAJOR POSTHUMOUS EXHIBITIONS

1958	Memorial Exhibition, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
1958	The Russian Scene, Pushkin House, London.
1961	Russian Art and Life, Hove Museum, Hove (group exhibition).
1962	Centenary Exhibition, City Gallery, Lenbachhaus, Munich. Centenary Exhibition, City Art Gallery and Museum, Bristol. Centenary Exhibition, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.
1969	Museum of Private Collections, Moscow. Oxford University Press, Ely House, London. Westfield College, London.
1974	Von Maltzahn Gallery, London.
1975	Von Maltzahn, representing the London Gallery at the International Arts Fairs at Basel and Dusseldorf.
1978	1978 Scottish Arts Council Touring Exhibition shown at: Crawford Centre for the Arts, University of St Andrews Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield MacRobert Art Gallery, Stirling Talbot Rice Art Centre, Edinburgh.
1979	Retrospective Exhibition, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
1980	Paris-Moscou (Tolstoy section), Musée National d’Art Moderne, Pompidou Centre, Paris (group exhibition).
1982	Moskva-Parizh, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (group exhibition).
1982-83	Leonid Pasternak: 1862-1945, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.
1984	Ceri Richard Gallery, Taliesin Arts Centre, University College of Swansea.
1987-90	U.S. Tour organized by the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service (Washington DC, New York, Chicago, Palm Beach, Memphis, St. Joseph, Santa Clara, Kansas City).
1990	Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
1994	A Musical Offering, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield.
1995	(1995 onwards) Museum of Private Collections, Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow (permanent exhibition).
1999	(1999 onwards) The Pasternak Trust: A Family Collection, Oxford (permanent exhibition).
1999	Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
2001	Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Leonid Pasternak in Russia and Germany.