( Vasil’yevna )
(b Wiesbaden, Jan 31, 1870; d Chêne Bougerie, nr Geneva, Dec 27, 1902).
Russian painter, decorative artist and designer . She was a major Symbolist artist in Russia and played a significant role in the revival of folk traditions in Russian art in the late 19th century. She grew up in Moscow and studied (1885–8) under Yelena Polenova and Vasily Polenov as an external student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Subsequently she joined Yelena Polenova’s group for the study of the historical and archaeological monuments of Moscow and became closely associated with the Abramtsevo group. From 1888 she spent winters in Paris, where she enrolled as a student at the Académie Julian. Her paintings, sometimes consisting of melancholic depictions of decaying mansions in the manner of Viktor Borisov-Musatov, were dominated by decorative landscapes. Always striving to express the synthetic inner vitality of organic life, she concentrated on forest motifs (e.g. The Window and Aspen and Fir Tree (both pokerwork and oil on panel, ...
