Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov was born in 1862 in Ufa into the family of a merchant. The future artist started his creative activities in a local grammar school in Ufa. After finishing school in 1874 he went to Moscow to continue his training. From 1876 to 1881 he studied in the School of Painting, Sculpturing and Architecture, and attended life classes in the Academy of Arts. Outstanding people and artists of that time Vasily Perov and Ivan Kramskoi were his teachers, whereas Isaac Levitan, Konstantin Korovin, and Aleksei Stepanov were his class fellows and friends. In 1885 he received the high title of an independent artist for his painting Calling of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov.

Tretyakov, the founder of the famous gallery acquired into his collection Nesterov’s first wonderful painting The Hermit (1889). Soon after it Mikhail Nesterov created his main masterpiece - The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew.

The artist went on painting in spite of anything - old age, illness, and adversities of wartime. In the last decades of his life Nesterov was absorbed in work on his memoirs, published as a separate and successful book in 1942 under the title Old Days. Mikhail Nesterov died at the age of 80, on October, 18th, 1942 in Moscow and was laid to rest at Novodevichy Cemetery.