The modest, delicate, and kind A. S. Stepanov, affectionately called 'Stepochka' by his friends S. V. Ivanov, N. P. Chekhov, the brothers S. A. and K. A. Korovin, I. I. Levitan, M. V. Nesterov, and his numerous students—including P. D. Korin, A. A. Plastov, L. V. Turzhansky, among others—was deeply loved and respected. After Stepanov's exhibition, Korin remarked: 'It was as if I had read Pushkin's poetry. Simple, yet so lofty... What can be said? He was an artist. That's all you need to say. Everything in him was simple, without showiness. His soul was present, and that's what matters most. Yet he possessed remarkable artistry and unrivaled mastery. He sparkled with great simplicity.' Stepanov lost his parents very early. From the age of seven, he was raised by a guardian, under whose insistence he graduated from the Land Surveying Institute in Moscow in 1879 and became a land surveyor. However, he did not work in this specialty. In 1880, he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, studying under I. M. Pryanishnikov. He was a successful student and graduated in 1884 with a large silver medal. In the latter half of the 1880s, Stepanov spent several summer seasons painting alongside I. I. Levitan, first near Zvenigorod, then on the Volga. Along with Levitan, he is regarded as one of the founders of the so-called 'mood landscape,' where an artist seeks out motifs in nature corresponding to their inner state and imbues the landscape with their own thoughts and emotions. Stepanov was recognized as an Academician by the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1905 for his painting 'Morning Greeting.' His works, characterized by plein air painting, were executed with broad, sketch-like, transparent and soft strokes, often using a limited palette ('Use fewer colors,' he advised his students). He loved to depict village roads with peasant horses pulling sleds or wagons, and often portrayed peasant children observing the world around them—bare, poor, autumnal, yet native and wide. His genre could be described as landscape-animalistic. Nesterov considered Stepanov the best animalistic painter after V. A. Serov, who also held his talent in high esteem and insisted upon inviting Stepanov as a teacher at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. For about twenty years (1899-1918), Stepanov led the "animal class" there, beloved by students. Little is known of his personal life, as he destroyed his archive shortly before his death. But all of him is in his paintings. In 1920, Stepanov fell seriously ill but continued to work. One of his last paintings, "The Swings" (1923), was acquired by the Carnegie Institute. Stepanov died in 1923 and was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery.
