Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin

Bilibin, Ivan Yakovlevich (1876–1942), Russian illustrator and stage designer. Commissioned as a young artist by the Department for the Production of State Documents to illustrate a series of fairy‐tale books (1899–1902), Bilibin built his entire career on the interpretation of Russian folk tales and bylinas (traditional folk epics), often depicting the same stories again and again. Frances Carpenter's Tales of a Russian Grandmother first brought his work to English‐speaking children in 1933. Like many artists of the late 19th century, he was influenced by the Japanese print, particularly in his early illustrations, with their asymmetrical compositions and soft, bright colours outlined in black ink. His main inspiration, however, was Russian folk art. He acquired an extensive study collection, which eventually formed the basis of the ethnographic section at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, and became famous for the authenticity of his details. Increasingly influenced by Russian icons and the popular prints of the 17th century, his later illustrations acquired a flat, stylized look, with stronger colour, a more pronounced black outline, and a proliferation of repetitive, patterned detail. Bilibin illustrated many of Pushkin's fairy‐tale poems and designed sets and costumes for several of the operas based on them, including Glinka's Russlan and Ludmilla and Rimsky‐Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel and The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Although he left Russia as a refugee in 1920, he returned in 1936, dying six years later in the siege of Leningrad.

Bibliography

• Golynets, Sergei, Ivan Bilibin (1982).

— Suzanne Rahn