Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi ( ; ) or Arkhyp Kuindzhi (; 27 January 1841 – 24 July 1910) was a landscape painter from the Russian Empire of Pontic Greek descent from the area of Mariupol (modern-day East Ukraine). Kuindzhi was one of the best friends of Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev with whom he collaborated on color studies. Date of birth Kuindzhi's exact date of birth is not known. Although it was believed that he was born in 1842, the latest discoveries in archives suggest that he was born in 1841. Kuindzhi himself, when asked by St. Petersburg Academy of Arts to clarify his date of birth, "clearly wrote 1841, then, with doubt, January, and then several times crossed out the month". The researchers believe he was born somewhere between January and March 1841. The commonly recognized date is January 27, although Kuindzhi celebrated his name day on February 19 O.S. (March 4 N.S.), on the feast of Archippus. Biography Arkhip Kuindzhi was born in Mariupolsky Uyezd (one of the subdivisions of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire) but spent his youth in the city of Taganrog. His Christian name is a Russian rendering of the Greek, Ἄρχιππος, (Archippos, from ἄρχος (archos) "master" and ἱππος (hippos) "horse": "master of horses"; cf. Colossians 4:17, Philemon 1:2) and his surname came from his grandfather's vocational nickname meaning 'goldsmith' in Crimean Tatar (). He grew up in a poor family; his father was a Pontic Greek shoemaker, Ivan Khristoforovich Kuindzhi (elsewhere Emendzhi). Arkhip was six years old when he lost his parents, so he was forced to make a living working at a church building site, grazing domestic animals, and working at the corn merchant's shop. He received the rudiments of an education from a Greek friend of the family who was a teacher and then went to the local school. In 1855, at age 13–14, Kuindzhi visited Feodosia to study art under Ivan Aivazovsky, however, he was engaged merely with mixing paints and instead studied with Adolf Fessler, Aivazovsky's student. A 1903 encyclopedic article stated: "Although Kuindzhi cannot be called a student of Aivazovsky, the latter had without doubt some influence on him in the first period of his activity; from whom he borrowed much in the manner of painting." English art historian John E. Bowlt wrote that "the elemental sense of light and form associated with Aivazovsky's sunsets, storms, and surging oceans