The Law and the Brush The path toward the canvas begins not in a studio, but in the lecture halls of Moscow State University. Born into a merchant family, Dmitry Anfimovich Shcherbinovsky follows the expectations of his parents into the study of law. He graduates in 1891, a man trained in the logic of statutes, yet his focus has already drifted toward the influence of Vasily Polenov. The transition from legal theory to visual expression is swift. He moves from the university to the Imperial Academy of Arts, entering the orbit of Pavel Chistyakov and Ilya Repin. It is under Repin’s guidance t…