29.01.1844 – 01.12.1911

Vasily Maksimov was born into a family of state peasants, and up to ten years he grew up in the countryside. Like most Russian artists, the range of his early artistic impressions became decisive. Maximov was surrounded by centuries-old way of life of peasants, colorful ceremonies of weddings and agricultural holidays, huts with beautiful carvings, costumes, household fabrics, embroideries on them. The boy woke up early poetic sensitivity and the ability to see beauty.

In six years, Vasily survived the death of his father, and at ten – the death of his mother. Mother managed to identify her son in the monastery school, and then to the novices of the Nikolayev Monastery, from which he left autocratically, went to Petersburg and entered the iconographic studio of Poshekhonov. Faced with unprecedented cruelty in dealing with students, he escaped from this workshop to the icon painter KA Yarygin, where he lived for five years. The boy lived a dream to study at the Academy of Arts. To earn money for clothes, he managed to write icons and portraits of local small merchants. To survive in such conditions and not get lost, Maximov needed to have great perseverance and inner aspiration.

In the autumn of 1862, Maximov passed the entrance examinations to the Academy of Arts, in 1863, as an auditor (since he had no leave from the rural society), he began his studies at the Academy. Maximov began his studies with reverence and ecstasy. For him, the time of rapid success began. In continuation of the entire training, among the talented fellow practitioners, among whom were Savitsky, Polenov and Repin, Maximov was one of the very first.

In the spring of 1864 in St. Petersburg, young Maximov entered the Artel of Artists, headed by P.A. Crusader. Young artists of the early 1860s, mastering the aesthetics of the revolutionary democrats, first turned to the reproduction of Russian life, to the search for beauty in real life. The young generation of painters, in an atmosphere of general democratic upheaval, was imbued with civic ideals, assured of their social and moral vocation. Maximov was a direct witness of all these events.

At the end of the Academy with the title of artist of the third degree Vasily Maksimov settled in his native village. He lived in a hut, wore a Russian shirt and trousers. Peasants took Maximov, he became for them his. The authority of the artist was so great that the peasants went to him for advice, he was invited to the family sections, with many peasants he corresponded for many years. Life in the countryside and the writing of peasant paintings became a real asceticism of a deeply convinced and strong spirit of the artist.

Image: В.М. Maksimov. Meager lunch. 1870’s. (from the collection of the VKHM named after I. Kramskoy).