Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin (1881 - 1955

 Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin  (1881 - 1955
Born in Russia in Kazan on the banks of the Volga River, Nicolai Fechin became one of America's foremost ethnic portrait painters during the early 20th century.
He spent his childhood in the Volga Forest and learned wood carving from his father who worked with metals and wood as a craftsman. When he was 13, Fechin enrolled with a scholarship at the Kazan Art School, founded by his grandfather, and six years later, he began study at the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg