Gevorg Bashinjaghian

Bashinjaghian was born to Armenian parents on 16 September 1857 in a small town of Sighnaghi in eastern Georgian province of Kakheti, part of the Russian Empire at the time. His father, Zakar, died in 1872 during a trip to Persia, when he was 15. After finishing the local school, he was admitted to the Arts School. In 1878, Bashinjaghian moved to the Russian capital St. Petersburg, where he became a student at the Imperial Academy of Arts a year later. Mikhail Clodt was one of his teachers. He graduated from the Academy in 1883, also winning a silver medal for his Birch Grove.