Fyodor Vasilyev

In 1863, he managed to enter the evening classes of the School of Painting at the Society for Promotion of Artists (Russian: Школа Поощрения Художеств, romanized: Shkola Pooshchreniya Khudozhestv).

In 1866 famous landscape painter Ivan Shishkin fell in love with Feodor's sister Evgenia Vassilyev.

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.

Vasilyev was admitted, as an intern, to the Imperial Academy of Arts (which, among other things, gave him an exemption from conscription to the Army).

The "boy genius", as he was called in the artistic circles of Russia, had no time to enjoy his popularity – he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and had to leave St. Petersburg forever.

Many art historians emphasize Fedor Vasilyev's influence on Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov, Viktor Borisov-Musatov.