Grabar (then Hrabrov) attended high school in Yegoryevsk, where his father taught foreign languages. The stream of magazine publications that followed the 1881 murder of Alexander II of Russia gave him the first impetus to draw. In 1882, the Hrabars (Hrabrovs) relocated to Kiev, closer to the continuing trial of their mother and grandfather; later in the same year, Emmanuil Hrabar accepted an appointment to Izmail. He sent Igor to Mikhail Katkov's boarding school in Moscow; the schoolmaster waived tuition fee to a fellow slavophile. Igor Grabar, interested in drawing, soon made contacts with the students of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and already established artists - Abram Arkhipov, Vasily Polenov and the Schukins, wealthy patrons of art. Strapped for cash, he painted portraits of fellow students for a fee.