Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts

The Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (Russian: Императорское общество поощрения художеств (ОПХ)) was an organization devoted to promoting the arts that existed in Saint Petersburg from 1820 to 1929. It was the oldest society of its kind in Russia. Until 1882 it was called the "Society for the Encouragement of Artists". After 1917, it became the "All-Russian Society for the Encouragement of the Arts".

The Society was founded by a group of influential patrons (including Ivan Alexeyevich Gagarin, Pyotr Andreyevich Kikin and Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov) with the aim of assisting development in the Fine Arts, the diffusion of knowledge related to the arts, and the education of painters and sculptors. In 1833, Tsar Nicholas I formally confirmed the Society's existence by law and placed it under his personal protection.

Before then, many young artists benefited from Society grants that enabled them to study overseas. Among them were Karl Bryullov and Alexander Brullov in 1822, Alexander Ivanov in 1827 and Alexey Tyranov in 1830. During the Society's existence, many students of the Imperial Academy of Arts also received financial support, including Vasily Vereshchagin, Firs Zhuravlev, Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Mikhail Clodt, Ivan Kramskoi, Lev Lagorio, Kirill Lemokh, Konstantin Makovsky, Leonid Solomatkin, Konstantin Flavitsky and Pavel Chistyakov.

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