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1868–1876

Friendship with Repin and the “evenings” at Antokolsky’s

In St Petersburg he grew very close to Ilya Repin; he attended the “evenings” at the apartment of Repin and the sculptor Mark Antokolsky, where the student Ivan Savenkov read bylinas in a slow chant, in the northern accent so familiar to Vasnetsov — and so his interest in early Russian culture and folk epic finally took shape.

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.

1874

“Tea-drinking in a Tavern” with the Peredvizhniki

In 1874 he took part for the first time in an exhibition of the Peredvizhniki, showing “Tea-drinking in a Tavern” (“Over Tea”).

1876

A trip to Paris: Polenov, Repin and an advance

He dreamed of going abroad but had no money; Polenov offered help, Repin invited him to the Peredvizhniki colony in Paris, and, taking an advance from a publisher, Vasnetsov left in 1876 and settled with the Kramskois; his younger brother Apollinary, who disliked living at his elder brother’s expense, decided to go back to Vyatka.

1876–1877

Mamontov’s letter, homesickness and the first sketch for the “Bogatyrs”

In Polenov’s Paris studio he and Repin re-read a letter from Savva Mamontov calling the artists to Moscow; the letter sharpened his homesickness (“Alone, alone and alone!”), and it was there that the first painted sketch of the “Bogatyrs” was made.

1877

Wedding to Alexandra Ryazantseva

Before leaving for Paris he had proposed to Ryazantseva; the wedding took place in November 1877 in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul of the Semyonovsky-Alexandrovsky military hospital in St Petersburg.