Vasily Alekseyevich Vatagin (20 December 1883 – 31 May 1969) was a wildlife artist who worked on a variety of media producing paintings, sculpture, reliefs and illustrations. His works have been used in books and are installed in many institution in Russia. He was a professor at the Moscow Higher School of Arts and Industry. Vatagin was born in Moscow in the Russian Empire where his father was a school teacher. He studied art in 1898 under N.A. Martynov while studying zoology. He obtained a PhD degree in zoology and studied for two years at the art school of

Konstantin Yuon Konstantin Fyodorovich Yuon or Juon (russian: Константи́н Фёдорович Юо́н; – April 11, 1958) was a noted Russian painter and theatre designer associated with the Mir Iskusstva. Later, he co-founded the Union of Russian A ...

. He then worked with the ornithologist

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Menzbier Mikhail Aleksandrovich Menzbier (Russian: Михаил Александрович Мензбир; 23 October 1855 – 10 October 1935) was a Russian ornithologist. Based in Moscow, he was a founding member of Russia's first ornithological body, ...

, illustrating his books. From 1908 he began to work in a range of media and learned sculpture and lithography spending some time in Berlin. He became a member of the Moscow artists association (1911) and the Society of Russian Sculptors. He held his first art exhibition in 1909. He travelled around Europe and Asia and spent some time in India and Ceylon in 1913–1914. He was accompanied by the children's book author Alexander "Cheglok" (born Alexander Usov). Vatagin worked on racial and anthropological themes briefly. While in Berlin in 1926 he stayed with

Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij (also Timofeyeff-Ressovsky; russian: Николай Владимирович Тимофеев-Ресовский; – 28 March 1981) was a Soviet biologist. He conducted research in radiation genetics ...

. Between 1924 and 1929 he produced masks of the people of the Soviet Union for the Moscow Museum of Ethnology. In 1913, he married Antonina Nikolaevna, daughter of the artist Antonina Rzhevskaya née Popova (1861–1934) and Nikolai Fedorovich Rzhevskij. They had two daughters; Irina and Natalia. Vatagin illustrated many books written or translated by others. These included the works of

Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much o ...

Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

and Ernest Seton Thompson. He also wrote a book on animal art titled "Image of an Animal. Notes of the Animalist" (1957). He trained many other artists including D. Gorlov, G. Nikolsky, V. Smirin, and V. Trofimov. At the Moscow State Darwin Museum he produced a number of sculptures and panels under the direction of Aleksandr Kots. He died on 31 May 1969 in Moscow, and is buried in the city of Tarusa.

References

Bibliography

External links

Tretyakov Magazine on Vatagin

Slavinsky, Y.M. 1933 (in Russian)

A children's book illustrated by Vatagin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vatagin, Vasily Sculptors from the Russian Empire Soviet sculptors Imperial Moscow University alumni 1883 births 1969 deaths Animal artists