10 facts about the artist Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel

“The Struggle of Gold and Blue” — so said the poet Alexander Blok about the artist's paintings.

The surname “Vrubel” comes from the Polish “wróbel” — 'wróbel' means 'sparrow'. The artist descended from a Russified noble family of Polish origin.

He was the son of a military man. Vrubel's childhood, and that of his brothers and sisters, took place at their father's postings: Astrakhan, Kharkov, Saratov, Saint Petersburg, Odessa. The children were raised by a stepmother — Elizaveta Wessel. The closest person in the family to the artist was his sister Anna — only to her did Vrubel confide his spiritual struggles and artistic plans.

Vrubel was a prodigy. From early childhood the future artist was interested in the world of art and displayed remarkable abilities in many fields of knowledge. He knew Latin, Greek and French excellently and graduated from gymnasium with a gold medal. With such an intellectual background he could have become anything.

Almost became a lawyer. Entering the law faculty was his family's decision, and he did not oppose it. During his university years he was more absorbed in German philosophy and in creating illustrations for literary works. In the end, the artist did not defend his diploma and barely graduated from the university with the rank of 'regular student'.

He was an auditor at the Imperial Academy of Arts. It was there that the fateful meeting between Vrubel and the brilliant teacher Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov took place, determining the master's creative fate. It was also there that Vrubel befriended the artist Valentin Serov.

He proposed marriage to his boss's wife. He was desperately and unrequitedly in love with Emilia Prakhova — the wife of his employer Adrian Prakhov. Emilia was the object of a kind of romantic cult for the artist; her image is captured in the icon 'The Virgin and Child' and in numerous sketches from that period.

He worked in ceramics and theatrical set design. Thanks to the patronage of Savva Mamontov, Vrubel became interested in decorative and applied arts and began creating at the Abramtsevo workshops. He produced remarkably beautiful tiles and majolica and drew unusual sketches for theatrical decorations and costumes.

Obsessed with the Demon? The artist's mental state was severely shaken after the death of his only son, Savva. It was during this period that Vrubel immersed himself in work on his cycle of mystical 'Demons'. Researchers of the artist's work believe that these paintings reflected the whole essence of Vrubel's genius and madness.

Lost his sight at the end of his life. In his final years the artist lived in a psychiatric hospital; his condition was unstable — he went blind, could no longer paint and increasingly existed in a borderline state. The master died at the age of 54. His wife, Nadezhda Ivanovna Zabela-Vrubel, survived him by only three years.