Nikolai Sapunov

Nikolai Nikolaevich Sapunov (1880–1912) was a Russian painter. He was born in Moscow and studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Isaac Levitan (1893–1901), and at the Academy of Arts (1898–1901) under Kiseliov.

He painted sets for Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow based on designs by Korovin (1901–1902), as well as for Moscow Art Theatre (from 1904), the sets and costumes for Meyerhold's 1906 production of Alexander Blok's The Puppet Show, and theatres of Vera Komissarzhevskaya and experimental Theatre of Alexandr Tairov. His best known paintings are the magnificent stills with flowers and china.

At the end of his life he began a series of ironic genre pictures, which he left unfinished, as was his wish to go abroad. Nikolai Sapunov drowned in a boating accident in Terioki, Finland at the age of 32.