AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The House of Arkady Vasnetsov on Ulitsa Volodarskogo 116 is the former home and workshop of the youngest brother of Russia's most celebrated painting dynasty — the Vasnetsovs. Arkady Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1858–1924) was far more than a footnote to his famous siblings Viktor and Apollinary: a master furniture-maker whose carved cabinets and inlaid sideboards were prized by Moscow's great art patrons, and a transformative civic leader who helped bring running water, electricity, and a railway to the city of Vyatka (today's Kirov).↗↗↗
Though the house is not open as a museum, it stands as an evocative landmark for anyone tracing the Vasnetsov story through Kirov — a quiet, fenced wooden home perched at the edge of a ravine, still carrying the atmosphere of a household where art, music, and civic idealism intertwined.↗↗
A Brother in Viktor's Shadow — and Beyond
Arkady Mikhailovich Vasnetsov was the fifth of seven sons born to a village priest in Ryabovo, Vyatka Province. Like his elder brothers, he showed genuine artistic gifts — Viktor himself wrote that his drawings were "beautiful." But Arkady's talent found its highest expression not on canvas but in wood: carved cabinets in the style of Russian fairy-tale towers, inlaid sideboards fashioned with exotic hardwoods ordered from abroad. He trained at the famous Abramtsevo workshops of the Mamontov family near Moscow, then returned to Vyatka in 1894 to set up his own workshop in the basement of the house he purchased on Nikitskaya Street.