"Витязь на распутье" (I вариант)

1867–1868 · Ausbildung

Risovalnaya shkola Imperatorskogo obshchestva pooshchreniya khudozhestv

1868

Admitted to the Academy of Arts

In August 1868, at the second attempt, he was admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts; the attempt a year earlier had not worked out.

1870

He meets Pavel Chistyakov

Pavel Chistyakov, back from Rome, saw Vasnetsov’s drawing “A Prince’s Icon-painting Workshop” at an Academy exhibition, asked to be introduced to its author and soon made him a regular pupil; Vasnetsov remembered his teacher as “an enemy of the formula” who could show each pupil the road to his own development.

summer 1871

He meets his future wife, Alexandra Ryazantseva

In the summer of 1871, home in Vyatka on academic leave, he met Alexandra Ryazantseva in the local library — a merchant’s daughter who would become one of the first women from Vyatka with a higher medical education; he was struck by “her eyes — stern and extraordinarily kind”.

1873–1875

He leaves the Academy before graduating

In 1873, a year before the end of the course, he almost stopped attending the Academy and went only to Chistyakov’s studio: Chistyakov told him he had already got from the Academy all it could give, and Kramskoi advised the same; on 4 (16) February 1875 he was formally discharged, receiving a certificate that listed two small silver medals and one large one.

1878

He moves to Moscow, the city of his life’s work

In 1878, his resolve strengthened by Mamontov’s letter, he moved to Moscow, the city to which most of his creative life would be tied: he settled in a small flat in 3rd Ushakovsky Lane near Ostozhenka, walked the city for hours admiring the Kremlin and St Basil’s, and until 1885 the family changed rented flats in Moscow six times.