Think that you may own a painting by Fyodor Vasilyev? We authenticate, appraise, research and issue certificates of authenticity (COA) and provide consultations for all paintings by Fyodor Vasilyev.

Fyodor Vasilyev was a Russian landscape painter who introduced the lyrical landscape style in Russian art.Vasilyev was born to a low level government official, Alexander Vasilyevich Vasilyev, and Olga Emelyanova Polyntseva on 22 February N.S. 1850. His parent married four years later, so he was always considered an illegitimate child. Feodor had to earn his living from the age of 12 – he worked as a mailman, scribe, and assistant to a restorer of pictures. After his father’s untimely death, he became the sole supporter of the family.

In 1866 famous landscape painter Ivan Shishkin fell in love with Feodor's sister Eugenia Vassilyev. Shishkin became acquainted with Feodor and started to teach him landscape painting. From July to November of 1867 Shishkin and Vassilyev worked together on island of Valaam. Some places on Valaam were subjects of both artist's paintings. Later Shishkin introduced Feodor to Ivan Kramskoi, Ilya Repin, and art collectors Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov and Pavel Sergeevich Stroganov. Later Vasilyev became a major competitor to Ivan Shishkin and the later was often accused of using intrigues and administrative influence trying to win over Vasilyev on different art competitions.

In Vasilyev’s early works, such as After a Thunderstorm (1868), Near a Watering Place (1868) and others, one can feel the influence of the Barbizon school; it affected his art but never resulted in a non-creative borrowing of the motifs. Though, at first, Vasilyev was somewhat inferior technically to the Barbizon painters, most critics agree that he eventually found his own way of handling the subject. After a Rain (1869) and After a Rain. Country Road exceed in many respects the Barbizon stormy scenes in their expressiveness and deeply national sound.