Крым. Горные вершины

1914

His first wife leaves for England with their sons

Maria Chambers left for England with the children and never returned to Russia. Their elder son Alexander, deaf since the age of nine, became a well-known stage designer there, and the younger, Ivan, a journalist.

1915

Co-founds the Society for the Revival of Artistic Rus

Together with many artists of his day, Bilibin took part in founding the Society for the Revival of Artistic Rus. The same year he designed ceilings for the Kazansky railway station in Moscow, but the paintings were never carried out.

March 1916

Elected chairman of the World of Art

Bilibin was elected chairman of the World of Art group.

September 1917

Renée O'Connell leaves him over his drinking

The relationship foundered on Bilibin's drinking: before a witness, the musician Stepan Mitusov, the couple agreed that Renée would stay if he did not drink for a year. Bilibin did not keep his word, and in September 1917 she left him; Mitusov wrote a comic poem about their break-up.

22 September 1917

A month before the October Revolution, leaves for Batiliman

Shortly before the October Revolution Bilibin left Petrograd alone for Crimea, for his house at Batiliman, where he lived and worked until September 1919.

1918

Death of his mother, the pianist Varvara Bubnova

The artist's mother, Varvara Alexandrovna (née Bubnova, 1847–1918), a pianist and pupil of Anton Rubinstein and the daughter of a Baltic Fleet naval engineer, died.