Timm, Vasilii

(Latvian name, Vilhelms Timms). Born June 9 (21), 1820, in Sorgenfrei, in present-day Césis Raion; died Apr. 7, 1895, in Berlin. Russian painter and graphic artist. Latvian by birth.

Timm studied under A. I. Zauerveid at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1835 to 1838. Between 1844 and 1848 he worked in France and Algeria. Timm painted battle scenes, genre scenes, and landscapes. He won acclaim for his genre illustrations (executed in the technique of xylography) and lithographs (mainly for the Russkii khudozhestvennyi listok —a magazine published by the artist from 1851 to 1862), which depict with fidelity and gentle humor the everyday life of townspeople from various strata of Russian society. Timm did a series of sketches of the defense of Sevastopol’ of 1854–55. From 1867, Timm lived for the most part in Germany and worked in ceramics.