Russian Visual Arts Project

Writer on art, music, history and archaeology. Son of Vasilii Petrovich Stasov, a major neo-classical architect whose works include the Barracks of the Pavlovskii regiment on the Field of Mars, the Trinity Cathedral of the Izmailovskii regiment and the Spaso-Preobrazhenskii Cathedral in St Petersburg. Vladimir Stasov graduated from the School of Jurisprudence in 1843 and worked in the Senate and the Ministry of Justice. In 1851 he retired from state service and became secretary, art consultant and librarian of Anatolii Demidov, Prince of San Donato, for whom he worked in Rome and Florence until 1854. In 1856 he joined the art department of the Imperial Public Library in St Petersburg, and in 1872 he became the librarian in that deparment. From 1847 Stasov contributed to more than fifty Russian and foreign periodicals and published more than seven hundred articles of art and music criticism and several books. He was a correspondent and a close friend of many Russian artists, such as Vasilii Vereshchagin, Mikhail Antokol'skii and Ilia Repin. Stasov was a passionate supporter of the Association of the Itinerant Art Exhibitions and champion of realism and nationality in art. His critical writing on art catered to the interests and needs of a wide public and he succeeded in gaining both a large readership and a reputation as the major art critic of the second half of the 19th century.

Pseudonyms: V.S., O, etc.

'Academic exhibition of 1863' (1864)

'The Itinerant exhibition of 1871' (1871)

'Repin's painting "The Volga barge-haulers" ' (Letter to the editor of St Petersburg News, 1873)

'Mr Prakhov's Inaugural Lecture at the University' (1874) (Letter to the Editorial Board of St Petersburg News)

'Deplorable aestheticians' (1877)

'The Itinerant exhibition of 1878' (1878)