Vladimir Tomilovsky
Vladimir Petrovich Tomilovsky (April 4, 1901 – June 17, 1991) was a Russian landscape painter known for pictures of Siberia and Lake Baikal. He was born in Novogeorgievsk, part of the Russian Empire, into a military family. His grandfather was a general, his father Pyotr Tomilovsky was a colonel and an early hot air balloon pilot, and his mother Maria was born in Paris. The family moved many times, and Vladimir spent his early years in Ulan-Ude and Irkutsk. At nine, he went to a military school in Irkutsk, where he loved drawing.
After finishing military school in 1917, he served in the army, first with Admiral Kolchak and later in the Red Army (1919–1924), leaving with the rank of Chief of Staff in a cavalry squadron. He began studying painting in 1920–1921 in Tomsk. From 1926 to 1930 he studied art in Irkutsk under Ivan Kopylov. In 1924 he married Tatyana Kazakova, and their daughter Maria was born in 1927.
Tomilovsky moved to Moscow in 1930 to study at the Moscow Art Academy, but money was tight and he worked as an artist in the city’s fine art committees. In 1934 he was arrested during political repressions and spent about 2.5 years in a prison camp. He was released in 1937 with no right to live in Moscow, so he returned to Irkutsk. He soon became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR.
When World War II began, he volunteered to join the Soviet Army but was refused. He instead helped by making agitation posters and drawings for the war effort in Irkutsk. In 1943 he was elected Chairman of the Irkutsk branch of the Union of Soviet Artists and held that role during the war. From 1946 he was elected several times as Head of the Audit Committee of the Irkutsk Union of Artists, and from 1956 to 1961 he served as Chief Artist of Irkutsk. He remained involved with the Union as a regular member.
Tomilovsky’s rehabilitation was fully recognized in 1982. The real reason for his prison sentence was his military family background. He continued to work in his Irkutsk studio until his death in 1991, producing more than a thousand paintings. His works are in many museums and private collections in Russia and abroad, including in Irkutsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Almaty, Paris, Athens, and other cities.
Art critics describe his early work as intimate, lyrical landscape painting of Siberia and Lake Baikal. He loved the sun and often painted it as a central motif. The Pearl of Lake Baikal, for example, is a famous painting in the Irkutsk Limnological Institute museum. In the 1970s he turned to large, industrial subjects, depicting hydroelectric dam sites to show their vast scale. Later, his work became more spare and universal, with themes of cosmic eternity and the fragility of nature amid urban growth. One famous late piece is On the Edge of the 21st Century, reflecting environmental concerns. A writer once called him a “worshipper of the sun,” noting how his light-filled works seemed to carry the sun’s glow.
Tomilovsky once said that a single painting can capture a person’s whole life, and his long career proves that idea.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 20:04 (CET).