Vassily Maximov

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Self portrait

Vassily Maximovich Maximov (Russian: Василий Максимович Максимов; 1844-1911) was a Russian painter, a prominent member of the Peredvizhniki group.

[edit] Biography

Vassily was born to a peasant family in the village of Lopino near Novaya Ladoga. He became an orphan early and worked for an Iconpainting shop, where he first learned to paint. In 1863 he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts and in 1864 he became a member of an Artel of Artists created by P.N. Krestonovtsev by the example of Ivan Kramskoi. The artel existed only one year and then was disband. Maximov painted the Sick Child painting (1864) at that time that received a Gold Medal of the Academia.

He took all the courses of the Academy in three years. In 1865 he (like the group of fourteen leaded by Ivan Kramskoi had done earlier) refused to take part in the competitions for the Major Gold Medal by Academia. He argued that he did need and study abroad (that was a part of the prize) but rather would study the Russian village. Indeed after the graduation of the Academia he moved to the village of Shubino in Tver gubernia, where he painted the peasant life earning money as a painting teacher of the Princes Golenischev-Kutuzov (descendants of Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov).

His painting Grandmother's tales (1867) shown on a Peredvizhniki exhibition won a prize at was bought by Pavel Tretyakov. In 1872 he was admitted to the Peredvizhniki group and soon became on of the most prominent and rigorous member of the group. Ilya Yefimovich Repin described Maximov a "the most uncrushable stone in the foundation of peredvizhnechestvo". Maximov painted many paintings of the peasant life.

The last twenty years of his life the realism paintings became out of fashion. Maximov still painted almost exclusively scenes of the peasant lives that had almost no buyers. The artist lived a life full of poverty and illnesses. He died in Saint Petersburg.