Maria Yakunchikova

Maria Vasilievna Yakunchikova-Weber (January 19, 1870 – December 27, 1902) was a Russian painter and graphic artist.

Early life and education

Yakunchikova was born in Wiesbaden, Germany in a prosperous industrialist family, and grew up in Moscow. Her family was very musical: her father, Vasily Ivanovich, was an expert at the violin, while her mother, Zinaida, played the pianoforte. Indeed, her father sponsored the construction of the Moscow Conservatory.

Yakunchikova's own interests, however, turned towards the fine arts. In 1882, following her sister Natalya's marriage to the landscape artist Vasily Polenov, his sister - Elena Polenova - also a fine artist, became a close friend. The Polenov residence was to become an important training centre for budding artists, and Yakunchikova joined as well, taking evening lessons with Elena between 1886 and 1889. Here she met artists such as Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov, Mikhail Nesterov and Konstantin Korovin, among others.

Beginning in 1883 she had private lessons in art with Nikolai Avenirovich Martynov, and from 1885 she studied as an external student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

In 1896, she married a doctor named Leon Weber-Bauler, who was studying at the Sorbonne at the time, and attached his name to hers from then until her death. Their first son, Stepan, was born in 1898.

In 1900, Yakunchikova's large panel Little Girl and the Wood Spirits (mixed media involving embroidery and applique) was awarded a Silver Medal at the Paris World Fair. Her other major contribution to the exposition was the display of works by the koustari, traditional artisans, whose applied arts garnered much excitement.

Alexandre Benois wrote of Yakunchikova in 1901:"Yakunchikova is not only a great poet but also a great master. In Russia she is still insufficiently appreciated, and yet there are few contemporary artists - not only here, but also in the West - who wield such a fresh, noble palette, with such broad and vigorous skill."

In 1905, at the second Union of Russian Artists exposition in Moscow, Yakunchikova's posthumous exhibition was held. Five years later, Musée Rath in Geneva held an exhibition of her work. "Yakunchikova's time was all too short for all the things she might have done. But in all that she had time to do, harassed by baby-napkins and the bustle of Paris, she revealed the depths of a lovely talent, a profound feeling and affection for our Russian forests, oh, so remote, 'those little pines and firs', which for her were instinct with religious feeling, and which she longed for all her life."