Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum in Furmanny Lane

Apollinary Vasnetsov, a landscape painter and explorer of Moscow, lived in the flat in Furmanny Lane for thirty years (1903-1933). In 1960, a memorial studio was opened in the artist’s flat and, in 1965, a memorial museum. The attractive atmosphere of the past and the multifaceted personality of the painter gather ever more new guests in the museum.

Apollinary Mikhailovich Vasnetsov in profile. Late 19th - early 20th century. Photo
© The Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum, Scientific Department of the State Tretyakov Gallery, 2024

Apollinary Vasnetsov (1856-1933) was born in the remote Vyatka province to a large family of a village priest. He came to Moscow for the first time in 1878, following his elder brother Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov. The city attracted the painters with its spirit of antiquity and rich historical past. From the first days of his life in Moscow, the young provincial was struck by its unique appearance. He devoted all his free time to “circling” around the Kremlin, sketching streets, ancient chambers and churches.

The artist finally became a resident of Moscow only in 1891, when he settled at the Koko- revskoye Podvorie hotel on Sofiyskaya Embankment for what turned out to be long ten years. Unlike his elder brother Viktor, he was not keen on making a home for himself and having a large family; enthusiastic by nature, he was completely absorbed by creative, exploratory, and social activity.

Apollinary Mikhailovich met his future wife Tatiana Ivanovna Odoyevtseva in the late 1890s, when he already was past forty. The meeting of future spouses took place at one of the evenings of the Society of Art and Literature at 37 Tverskaya Street. For some time, they co-habited without being formerly married. Only six months after the birth of their only son Vsevolod (15 November, 1901)[1], on 22 April, 1902, did Apollinary Mikhailovich and Tatiana Ivanovna have a church marriage.

In a congratulatory letter from the artist’s younger brother Arkady who lived in Vyatka, there are such curious lines: “We all congratulate you and Tatiana Ivanovna on your lawful marriage. Since you have not written anything to me regarding <...> the change in your life, your letter surprised us a little <...> now <...> all of us brothers have a proper human appearance <...> we would like to have a photo of Tatiana Ivanovna, send one to us, if you can”[2]. Soon congratulations on the birth of a son followed - as it turned out, that important event had also been kept secret for some time.

In 1903, Apollinary Mikhailovich and his family moved from Kokorevskoye Podvorye to the rental house (architect Ivan Gavrilovich Kondratenko) in Furmanny Lane owned by Anna Shugayeva. By that time, Vasnetsov had firmly established himself in the world of art - the artist is recognised at home and abroad; is awarded the Great Silver Medal for the painting “Elegy” (1896, State Tretyakov Gallery) at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition; on the recommendation of Ilya Repin, Vasily Polenov and others, is awarded the title of the Academician of Painting (1900); teaches at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (from 1901), participates in the organisation of the Union of Russian Artists (1903). The reason for choosing a new flat in Furmanny Lane can be linked to its proximity to the School, to which the master devoted 17 years[3]. There, at the School, the artist occupies a studio (1904) given to him by Valentin Alexandrovich Serov.

Ap. Vasnetsov in his studio in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. 1913. Photo
© The Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum, Scientific Department of the State Tretyakov Gallery, 2024

The house which the Vasnetsovs chose is an example of decent middle-class housing of the early 20th century - a long facade with a succession of identical windows decorated with elegant stucco mouldings, the flats have five living rooms, a kitchen, a toilet, and a bathroom, the amenities include running water, electricity, steam heating. The artist and his family took up a flat on the prestigious third floor.

The simple furnished flat, which the Vasnetsov family moved in, was being gradually set up as three larger walk-through rooms becoming a drawing room, a study and a dining room, and two smaller rooms becoming Tatiana Ivanovna’s bedroom and a children’s room. The drawing room
interior was made out in fashionable dark-maroon colours. Its floor was covered with a large Persian rug, in the middle was an exquisite early 19th century mahogany set. Near the wall, they placed a piano with bronze candlesticks, which the artist’s wife or musicians who visited them, used to play in the evenings. Soon, the walls of the drawing room and other rooms were covered with Apollinary Mikhailovich’s studies, works by his brother Viktor Mikhailovich and other artists, friends of the family, - Abram Yefimovich Arkhipov (Vsevolod Vasnetsov’s godfather), Nikolai Nikolayevich Khokhryakov, Vasily Vasilyevich Perepletchikov, Nikolai Alexandrovich Klodt, Vasily Dmitryevich Polenov, Elena Dmitryevna Polenova...

Apollinary Mikhailovich decorated the interiors of the flat with furniture of his own designs, made in the Moscow Handicraft Museum workshops. He made a small carved sideboard with forged details for the dining room, a wide armchair with a reversible back for the study. These, as well as many other furniture details, can be seen in the museum. Apollinary Mikhailovich was fond of antiques, was connoisseur of their value and artistic merits. He often bought antique items at the famous Sukharevsky market, where he was accompanied by his elder brother Viktor Mikhailovich. The artist’s son Vsevolod Apolli- naryevich recollected that during those walks his father had bought “a patterned shtof-bottle [square bottle containing 1.23 litres] of Peter the Great times, an iron headrest safe of the times of Alexei Mikhailovich [a headrest chest - Note by I.R.], and a wonderful book in a parchment binding, “Voyage to Muscovy by Adam Olearius” published in 1656”[4].

Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum Exposition of the “Study” room. Fragment
Photo: Ye. Alexeev

The main place in Apollinary Mikhailovich’s study was occupied by a massive desk and a cabinet full of books on history, art, astronomy, geography. Science and painting had an important role to play in Vasnetsov’s life. Profound research underlay his paintings and graphic works devoted to the old life style and architectural appearance of Moscow. The artist participated in scientific associations - the Imperial Archaeological Society, the “Old Moscow” Commission attached to that Society, the Moscow Society of Astronomy Lovers, etc. The study was also a preferred place for rest, where the master used to rest on a small Turkish sofa.

Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum Exposition of the “Vsevolod and Yekaterina Vasnetsov Study” room. Fragment
Photo: D. Primak

The dining room, the lightest room in the flat, was not infrequently used by Vasnetsov as a work studio. Recollecting his childhood years, Vsevolod Apollinaryevich remarked: “In the evening, father would take the table-cloth off the dining table, put various old maps, plans, prints <...> on it and sit down to work on his pieces about old Moscow. He would carefully elaborate on a charcoal drawing <...> and go to his studio [at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture - Note by I.R.] to finish it in watercolour”[5].

Apollinary Mikhailovich’s flat was visited by many representatives of the Moscow artistic world. The family did not gather big and noisy companies, but, as Vsevolod Apollinaryevich recollected, “friends and relatives often came to talk over evening tea”[6]. The family entertained Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin, Abram Yefimovich Arkhipov, Sergei Vasilyevich Malyutin, Konstantin Fyodorovich Yuon, Vasily Dmitryevich Polenov ... Apollinary Mikhailovich devoted over twenty years to collaboration with private and imperial theatres as a stage designer. His acquaintances and house guests included representatives of the actors’ community, among them Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin and Pyotr Sergeyevich Olenin. He was close to the writers Vladimir Alekseyevich Gilyarovsky and Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, to Academician Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev. Special evenings were organised for guests, where classical music and excerpts from opera arias were performed.

Apollinary Mikhailovich often invited his numerous students to his home, including Alexei Vladimirovich Isupov and Boris Nikolayevich Yakovlev. He talked with them about art broadening the outlook of the young provincials he himself once had been. Alexei Isupov was entrusted by the master with painting his wife’s portrait sitting in the drawing room (“Portrait of Tatiana Ivanovna Vasnetsova, Wife of the Artist Ap. M. Vasnetsov”. 1911, State Tretyakov Gallery).

The last years of Apollinary Vasnetsov’s life are especially closely connected with his Moscow flat. In 1918, the artist, the oldest teacher at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture at that time, was dismissed, deprived of his studio and denied the possibility of teaching his students, to whom he had dedicated many years[7]. From that time and almost to the last days of his life, he worked in his flat, in the dining room converted into a studio. There Vasnetsov created landscapes “Gloomy Day. The Urals” (1919, State Tretyakov Gallery), “Noise of the Old Park” (1926. State Tretyakov Gallery) and many others, also a series of autolithographies for the “Old Moscow” album.

In his home studio, the artist worked on what became well-known watercolours on the history of Moscow commissioned by the Moscow Communal Museum.[8] “They did remember, didn’t they, after all, that I am an artist and a historian,” - the elderly master would say with a smile. However, the situation of the family remained difficult, the artist’s earnings were low and unstable. In a letter to his brother Arkady in the early 1920s, he confessed: “I took <...> the job of a drawing teacher at the Handicraft Museum, it pays peanuts but as long as it is a “job”, it reduces the rent”[9].

In the post-revolutionary years, the Vasnetsovs’ flat lost its former cosiness, became cold and often dark. Life got concentrated in the dining room, aka studio, and the former children’s room, which were difficult to heat by small portable stoves. In the early 1920s, there was a threat of compaction [other families being added to live in the flat and turning it into a communal flat]. To protect themselves from unwanted tenants, the Vasnetsovs moved Tatiana Ivanovna’s relatives into the former children’s room. However, official compaction was not to be avoided, and soon the flat became truly communal. The artist and his family retained three rooms - the studio, the former drawing room and the study.

Those difficult years, though, were not without a happy event. On 24 March, 1925, the artist’s only grandson Vladimir was born. There is not much information about his mother, Vera Alexandrovna Kash- intseva; she is known to be from Arkhangelsk, her marriage to Vsevolod Vasnetsov did not last long. The painter’s son met her in the early 1920s, when he was combining his first northern expeditions with the studies at Moscow University.

During the last months of his life, Apollinary Mikhailovich did not leave his rooms. While he still had the strength to do so, he continued to work on a philosophical oeuvre[10], wrote letters in defence of architectural monuments, including against the demolition of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral. His condition was rapidly deteriorating. Tatiana Ivanovna concealed from her husband that he had cancer and used every bit of her remaining strength to support and look after him. The artist died on 23 January, 1933. Until his last breath, he waited for his son’s return from the polar expedition. Vsevolod Vasnetsov received the telegram about his father’s health rapidly deteriorating too late and was not in time to see him alive. He arrived in Moscow only to see him lying in state in the hall of the Tretyakov Gallery.

After the artist’s death, in 19301940, the flat, communal for a long time already, continued to be lived in by his widow Tatiana Ivanovna and his grandson Vladimir, a Red Navy man, a participant in
the Great Patriotic War from 1943, an architect in the future. The painter’s son Vsevolod Vasnetsov was at the time at the peak of his career as a polar explorer. In 1932, he met his future second wife Yekaterina Konstantinovna Kopylova, who was a trainee on his research vessel, the “Perseus”. They began to live together in Yekaterina’s flat in the Arbat district of Moscow. In 1933, Vsevolod was arrested and imprisoned for six months[11]; after his acquittal he continued his polar activities. In the 1940s, he lived with his wife in the Urals and managed the Ilmen Nature Reserve in the Chelyabinsk Region.

Tatiana Ivanovna Vasnetsova, who during the country’s difficult years managed to preserve her husband’s heritage, died in 1947. The artist’s grandson Vladimir moved out of the flat soon after his grandmother’s death; he did not keep in touch with his father.

The idea of creating a memorial museum in Apollinary Mikhailovich Vasnetsov’s flat was first voiced in the year of the master’s centenary (1956). The initiators were his heirs and prominent representatives of the cultural community. They included the artist’s son Vsevolod Apollinaryevich Vasnetsov, his wife Yekaterina Konstantinovna Vasnetsova, artists Boris Nikolayevich Yakovlev, Pavel Dmitryevich Korin, Alexander Alexandrovich Deineka, Leo Andreyevich Yastrzhembsky, director of the Museum of History and Reconstruction of Moscow in 1953-1976, and many others.

The history of the museum began with the opening of a memorial studio in the artist’s flat. Great support in this endeavour was provided by Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar. In 1957, his article appeared in the Vechernyaya Moskva newspaper, where he stressed that “the restoration of the studio is our duty towards the memory of a great Russian artist”[12].

Vs. A. and Ye. K. Vasnetsov. City of Rostock, GDR. 1956. Photo
© The Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum, Scientific Department of the State Tretyakov Gallery, 2024

Vsevolod Apollinaryevich Vasnetsov and his wife Yekaterina Konstantinovna made every possible effort to preserve the memory of the famous painter. As early as the end of 1957, the Moscow City Executive Committee made a decision to organise a memorial studio of Apollinary Mikhailovich Vasnetsov: “Flat No. 21 in house No. 6 in Furmanny Lane is a historical and memorial monument <...>. By decision of the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Council, a memorial studio of A. M. Vasnetsov is to be organised in this flat / Branch of the Museum of History and Reconstruction of Moscow”[13]. The artist’s studio was opened to the public in 1960.

The founders of the museum, Vsevolod Apollinaryevich and Yekaterina Konstantinovna Vasnetsov, twice succeeded in expanding it - in 1965 to three rooms in the artist’s flat (communal tenants were resettled), and in 1980, due to their persistence, a neighbouring flat (No. 22) was added to the museum. From that time on, the interior of Apollinary Vasnetsov’s flat (No. 21) - in the drawing room, studio and study - was recreated as it was during the master’s lifetime; the rooms regained their former pre-revolutionary cosiness. The annexed flat houses a large collection of the artist’s painting heritage.

In order to organise expositions, Vsevolod Vasnetsov donated to the state over two thousand exhibits: his father’s graphic and painting works, his personal belongings, furniture and documents. The Vasnetsovs developed exposition designs themselves trying to recreate “the spirit and the world in which the artist lived”. Until the end of their days, the founders of the museum lived in two small rooms of the painter’s flat. Vsevolod Apollinaryevich had no official position in the museum, his wife Yekaterina Vasnetsova was head manager of the museum from 1967 to 1996.

From 1960, the Apollinariy Vasnetsov Museum was a branch of the Museum of History and Reconstruction of Moscow, in 1986 it was incorporated in the “State Tretyakov Gallery” All-Russia Museum Association.

Today, the flat of the famous artist maintains an intimate, cosy atmosphere, acquaints visitors with the life of the master and his relatives. The museum holds traditional Vasnetsov evenings, lectures, philosophical discussions, and concerts - Apollinary Mikhailovich Vasnetsov’s favourite classical music is played for the guests, just as it was during his lifetime.

1. Vsevolod Apollinarievich Vasnetsov (1901-1989) - scientist, explorer of the Arctic, Master [Candidate in Russia] of Geology and Geography (1935), founder of the Apollinary Vasnetsov Memorial Museum.
2. Ar. M. Vasnetsov to Ap. M. Vasnetsov. 06.VI. 1902. // Archive of the Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum. Inv. at МКВ НВФ - 15676.
3. The building of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was located at 21 Myasnitskaya Street (from 1987, the Ilya Glazunov Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture).
4. Vasnetsov V.A. Pages from the Past. Leningrad. 1976. P.102.
5. Ibid. P. 40.
6. Ibid. P 8.
7. In 1918, Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was transformed into the Second Free State Arts Studios; in 1920, Apollinary Vasnetsov was deprived of his studio under the pretext of it being converted into a hostel for students of the Higher Art and Technical Studios.
8. The series is part of the collection of the Museum of Moscow.
9. Ap. Vasnetsov to Ar. Vasnetsov. 30.VII. 1923 (?). Archive of the Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum. Inv. at МКВ МФ-15639.
10. “Wandering to Obtain Truth. Philosophy of Self-Consciousness” (1914 - 1932). Not published. Archive of the Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum. Inv. МКВ МФ-АРХ-51 (vol.1, manuscript), МКВ МФ- АРХ-52 (vol.2, manuscript).
11. Vsevolod Vasnetsov was charged pursuant to political clause 58-7 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, “subversion of state industry, transport, trade”. The trial took place in December 1933 resulting in a probation sentence. He was fully exonerated in 1989.
12. Vechernyaya Moskva. - 1957. -No 85 - P. 3.
13. Decision of the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Council dated 13 December, 1957, No. 65/58. // Archive of the Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum.