What you can do in 23 years of life: Russian landscapes by Fyodor Vasiliev

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

How often fate is unfair and cruel to talented people. Measures them a very short life, filled with suffering and trials. And so there is nothing left but to work until exhaustion in order to have time to declare themselves to the world. In the history of Russian painting, such was the artist Fedor Vasiliev, whose life is compared to a shooting star that flashed brightly in the sky and quickly extinguished. Glory came to him at 21, and at 23 he was gone.

Yes, the artist's life was indeed very short, but incomparably less was allotted to him for creativity - only five years. However, his creative heritage, and Vasiliev wrote about 100 amazing landscapes, still makes you admire his soulfulness and depth. The artist managed to find and embody his own direction - lyric and poetry into his works of the landscape genre.

And if it were not for the insidious fate of the villain, Fyodor Vasiliev, having a genuine talent as a painter, could reach unattainable heights. For in such a short time, when others are just learning the basics of painting, he managed to write works that entered the golden fund of Russian art, leaving an indelible mark on it. Art critics suggest that if Vasiliev had lived longer than the twenty-three years he was given, the name of Fyodor Alexandrovich would undoubtedly be among the most famous Russian landscape masters. And some of them he, with his exceptional talent, could even outshine them.

Several pages from the biography of the young painter

Little Fedya was born in 1850 in the small town of Gatchina, near St. Petersburg in the family of a petty official Alexander Vasiliev. And since his parents were not married, he was an illegitimate son and had no right to a middle name. This fact will oppress the artist all his life.

Fedor's gift of a painter manifested itself very early, as a young boy, he skillfully redraws pictures from magazines that he liked. And by the age of ten, he was quite skillful in drawing with chalk and painted with oil paints. The boy also had a penchant for music. So, Fedor got to the free education at the gymnasium thanks to his sonorous child's voice. The boy sang excellently in the church choir, and since the family did not have money for a gymnasium, he was encouraged by free tuition.

His family was very poor. My father drank a lot, and what he didn't drink he lost at cards. In order to somehow help my mother, during the holidays I helped the postman deliver mail for one ruble a month. A little later, 12-year-old Fedor got a job as an assistant scribe at the Admiralty. And from the age of 13 he was hired to work at the post office - sorting out correspondence and doing other minor work. In 1865, his father, who was completely drunk, died, and at the age of 15 Fyodor became the main breadwinner of the family.

Realizing very quickly that painting was his vocation, Fyodor began attending classes in the Drawing School at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts in the evenings and, at the same time, got a job as an assistant to the restorer Sokolov, one of the best in St. Petersburg. The purposefulness of the young Vasiliev was phenomenal - he clearly knew what he wanted from life.

At the age of 16, Vasiliev met famous Russian artists - Ivan Shishkin and Ivan Kramskoy. Shishkin will soon marry Vasiliev's sister, Evgenia, and Kramskoy will remain his close and faithful friend for life, regardless of the age difference.

And the young artist was lucky enough to get under the tutelage of Count Pavel Sergeevich Stroganov, a major philanthropist who plays a significant role in the artistic life of the capital. It was he who became the first buyer of the paintings, and eventually the guardian of the 17-year-old nugget. Stroganov supplied him with materials for work, provided him with a wheelchair for going to the open air and invited him to stay for a long time at his estates in the provinces of Russia and Little Russia.

Thanks to the count, Vasiliev will acquire both secular gloss and the manner of an aristocrat., - from the memoirs of Kramskoy.

Vasiliev will try to make friends with 26-year-old Ilya Repin. Although he avoided the young self-confident youth and was immensely surprised looking at him:

And under the guise of this feigned swagger and cleverness, Fedor Vasiliev seeks to break out of the doomed and closed circle of life, to which he was sentenced by the very fact of his birth. Throughout his short but eventful life, the artist will desperately struggle with the complex associated with his origin.

Vasiliev, being practically self-taught, worked a lot, while sleeping a little. For his outstanding talent, he was immediately recognized by art lovers, and his painting was instantly sold out. In a couple of years he became a favorite of the aristocrats and bohemians of St. Petersburg. His contemporaries amazed immensely how many paintings with such an active lifestyle he managed to create and how far to advance, and with all that, he also managed to keep up everywhere: to the theater, to the ball, to the skating rink, where he was a regular visitor.

In 1871, at the competition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, Vasiliev with his canvas "Thaw" overtook Alexei Savrasov himself. The work, having received the first prize, was a phenomenal success. And a copy of this work was ordered for himself by the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Alexander III.

A year later, the Academy of Arts sent "The Thaw" to the World Exhibition in London - and there the home-grown painter again awaits overwhelming success and fame.

At 21 - such a triumph! It seemed to many that he was very early and undeserved, but only the closest friends and relatives knew how stubbornly Fedor went to his goal, not retreating a single step, at what cost it was all given to him.

Once Vasiliev's recklessness played a cruel joke on him. While skating on the rink, the heated young man ate snow. And this rash act turned into a fever for the artist at first, and later doctors began to express their suspicion of consumption. And when the diagnosis was confirmed, they strongly began to recommend that the young man immediately leave Petersburg and move south to the sun.

However, Vasiliev reacted to the insistent recommendations of the doctors and the mother's pleas in a childishly frivolous way. Having recovered a little from his illness, he went with a friend to Finland to "shout out Imatra" - at that time it was such a popular entertainment among young people. Standing on both sides at the icy foot of the waterfall, young people recklessly echoed to hoarseness and pain in their ligaments, trying to shout down the rumbling Imatra. This trip turned out to be fatal for the artist. Upon arrival, he became very ill and the doctors confirmed the diagnosis: throat tuberculosis. And Vasiliev immediately leaves for the Crimea with his mother and younger brother Roman. T

The artist did not like the bright sunny Crimea at all, he yearned for the city dear to his heart and its mean nature. For some time he even painted landscapes of northern Russia from memory. But having got used to it, he began to go out into the open air and paint the amazing nature of the peninsula.

In the last year of his life, anticipating the near end, he begins to work a lot and unrestrainedly. Vasiliev almost stops sleeping at night, forgetting himself in work, she alone helps not to think about death. Nobody, including himself, believes that the painter will recover.

There were periods when doctors restricted the artist's movement. He was not allowed not only to leave the house, but even to move from one room to another. And for the last six months of his life, doctors forbade Fyodor Alexandrovich to even speak, so as not to bother his throat. He was forced to communicate with the help of "conversational notebooks".

Fyodor Vasiliev died in 1873 and was buried in Yalta at the Polikurovsky cemetery. The artist's comrades staged his posthumous exhibition in St. Petersburg. It was surprising that all the works preparing for the exhibition, including albums with sketches and sketches, were sold out even before its official opening. As soon as Pavel Tretyakov acquired 18 paintings for his gallery at once. And Empress Maria Alexandrovna acquired several albums. Even unfinished canvases were sold out.

In truth, he was an incredibly talented artist, and according to many contemporaries and researchers, he could have made a huge revolution in all landscape painting, if not for an early death.

Read also: Why Repin's son took his own life, and his grandson was shot for his dream of becoming an artist