He was born in Moscow and studied at the
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under
Isaac Levitan (1893–1901), and at the
Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg (1898–1901) under
Kiseliov. He painted sets for the
Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow based on the designs by
Korovin (1901–1902), as well as for Moscow Art Theatre (from 1904), the sets and costumes for
Meyerhold's 1906 production of
Alexander Blok's
The Puppet Show, and theatres of Vera Komissarzhevskaya and experimental Theatre of
Alexandr Tairov. His best known paintings are
still lifes with flowers and china. At the end of his life he began a series of ironic
genre pictures, which he left unfinished, as he wished to go abroad. Nikolai Sapunov drowned in a boating accident in Terioki, Finland (now
Zelenogorsk) at the age of 32. == References ==