Viktor Vasnetsov

Biography

Childhood (1848–1858) Viktor Vasnetsov was born in the remote village of Lopyal in Vyatka Governorate in 1848, the second of the seven children (his only sister died 4 months after her birth). His father Mikhail Vasilievich Vasnetsov (1823–1870), known to be philosophically inclined, was a member of the priesthood, It was in Lopyal that Viktor started to paint, mostly landscapes and scenes of village life. Recalling his childhood in a letter to Vladimir Stasov, Vasnetsov remarked that he "had lived with peasant children and liked them not as a narodnik but as a friend". Already in 1863 a group of fourteen students left the Academy, finding its rules too constraining. This led to the Peredvizhniki movement of realist painters rebelling against Academism. Vasnetsov befriended their leader Ivan Kramskoi during his drawing classes before entering the Academy, referring to him as his teacher.

In the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Vasnetsov's painting of Ivan the Terrible is anachronistically presented as if it already existed in that Tsar's lifetime, and as being sent by Ivan to England when he offers to marry Queen Elizabeth I.

Vasnetsov's grandson, (1924–2009), was People's Artist of the USSR.

Works