Автопортрет

1863–1867

Elwiro Andriolli: “Give up the seminary”

The Polish artist Elwiro Andriolli, exiled to Vyatka after the uprising of 1863, noticed the young man’s talent and urged him to give up the seminary and go to the Academy of Arts — there were priests enough, good and bad, without him, but few people with such gifts; Vasnetsov helped him execute frescoes for Vyatka’s Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

1867

He leaves the seminary for St Petersburg

In 1867, with his father’s blessing, he left the Vyatka seminary and set off for St Petersburg to enter the Academy of Arts; he raised the money for the journey by auctioning his paintings “Woman Harvester” and “Milk-maid” (both 1867).

1867–1868 · Ausbildung

Risovalnaya shkola Imperatorskogo obshchestva pooshchreniya khudozhestv

1867–1868

Ivan Kramskoi: mentor and friend

While attending the drawing school of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists he befriended Ivan Kramskoi, leader of the Peredvizhniki, and called him his teacher.

August 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.

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.