Russian Lacquered Box - After Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1027) "Alyonushka." Based on the fairy tale of the same name, about a lonely orphan girl sitting by a riverside waiting for a savior, similar to the trickster Rasalka spirits. Original image painted in 1881. Red, the sign of danger, in the interior. Signed, dated, and titled indistinctly along the bottom of the image. Fedoskino school. 1961.

Size: 5 1/4 x 3 1/4 x 1 3/4 In. 

11# #6040 . 

Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov was born in the remote village of Lopyal in Vyatka Governorate in 1848. His father Mikhail was a member of the priesthood, as well as a scholar of the natural sciences and astronomy. His grandfather was an icon painter, and it was his influence that led Viktor and his brother Apollinary to become painters, while Viktor’s other brothers became teachers, all taught at home. Viktor began painting landscapes and scenes of village life in his youth, which infused his work for the rest of his life. At ten he began studying in a seminary in the larger village of Ryabovo, while working for a local shopkeeper painting icons. When he finished at the seminary he traveled to St. Petersburg to study art, but was rejected by the Imperial Academy of the Arts at first. He was finally granted entrance in 1868, by which time he had become close friends with members of the Peredvizhniki art movement, particularly their leader Ivan Kramskoy, who he referred to all his life as “teacher.” Although he initially focused on landscapes and street scenes, he achieved great success after pivoting to historical, mythological, and religious paintings. Throughout the 1870s he won awards in Russia, France, and England, and was welcomed into the growing circle of revolutionaries for his sympathetic portrait of the downtrodden lower classes. In 1876 he was invited to join the expatriate Peredvizhniki colony in Paris. While living in France Viktor studied classical and contemporary paintings, academic and Impressionist alike. He became interested in printmaking and exhibited some of his works at the Paris Salon. He also became fascinated with fairy tale subjects, incorporating them into his work when he returned to Russia the following year. The works caused a break between him and the Peredvizhniki, who were obsessed with realism and verisimilitude above all else. He returned to religious subjects in order to make ends meet, and was commissioned to paint frescoes for St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kiev from 1884 to 1889. In 1897 he collaborated with his brother Apollinary on theatrical design, including for operas which reinvigorated his interest in fairy tales and the supernatural. He created a hallmark “fairy tale” style of Russian Revivalist architecture, best personified by a church he designed in Abramtsevo, the façade of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and the work he did for the Russian pavilion of the World Fair in Paris in 1898. Between 1906 and 1911 Vasnetsov worked on the design of the mosaics for Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Warsaw as well as the one in Moscow, for which he was given a noble title by Czar Nicholas II. He allocated a significant portion of his income to the State Historical Museum, so much so that over half of the museum’s collection was acquired with his money. In 1915, Vasnetsov designed the military uniform for the Victory parade of the Russian army in Berlin and Constantinople, particularly the budenovka, a military hat reproducing the style of Kievan Rus’ cone-shaped helmets. After the October Revolution he advocated removing some of the religious paintings from churches to the Tretyakov Gallery to protect them. Because of his varied career, he was not executed despite his noble title, but was condemned to house arrest after 1923. He died in his home, a bitter recluse, in 1926.