Jūlijs Feders

Jūlijs Voldemārs Feders (June 19, 1838, Kokenhausen (now Koknese), Livonian province-January 19, 1909, Nizhyn, Chernigov province) was a Latvian painter, the brightest representative of the landscape genre in Latvian art.

In addition to landscapes depicting mainly the species Livonia, St. Petersburg province and Little Russia, he also painted portraits.

The most famous paintings are The Fisherman’s Nest, My Dacha, The Pine over the Cliff (Taganrog Art Museum), The Luga River (Taganrog Art Museum), The Smerch (at the London World Exhibition in 1874), The Winter Painting “(Was at the Berlin Jubilee Academic Exhibition in 1886) and” Study from Nature “(State Tretyakov Gallery).

July Feders was born on June 19, 1838 in the family of Janis Feders, a horse-rider in Koknese. Studied at the Riga Dome School and Bergman’s Private School, in 1856 joined the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, where he specialized in the landscape in the workshop of Socrates Vorobjov. In 1863, after the death of his father, he stopped his studies as a freelancer in Jelgava, worked as a real-school drawing teacher and from 1868 as a photographer.

In 1873, for the Landsat “Strauts”, the Petersburg Academy of Arts awarded Feder to a degree in Art Class II, but in 1874, for the paintings “Forest View”, “Vētra” and “Paper Factory in Līgatne” I was awarded the degree of artist. In 1874, Feders won the silver medal for London’s exhibition “Forest after the Storm” and became a member of the London Academy, but the painting was bought by the Persian Chess.

In 1874 he sold the photographer’s workshop and traveled to Norway, in 1875 he left Jelgava’s teacher and went to Düsseldorf to accompany the professor painter of the Baltic-German painter Eizins Dikers. In 1876 he went to Belgorod where he worked for 10 years as a drawing teacher. In 1880, Feder was elected to the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, from 1889 to 1898 worked as a lecturer in a commercial school in St. Petersburg, spent the summer in Latvia.

In the period of St. Petersburg, he became closer to the generation of young Latvian artists – Purvīts, Rozentāls, Valteris and others. Maintained contacts with the Latvian artist association “Rukis”. During this time, his interest in the national landscape was intensifying (“Gauja leja”, etc.). At the end of the century, Feder painted a large number of natural studies (“The Road to Ligatne”, “Sigulda Castle Pond,” etc.).

In 1898 Feders left the public service. Died on February 1, 1909, in the province of Chernigov in Neezhin. After the death of Federa in Riga, his paintings exhibition was organized.
Most known Federa’s work is in the Latvian National Museum of Art, one of the landscapes of the Tukums Museum of Art. Several works are in Russian museums, as well as in private collections. Federa’s landscapes have been constantly exhibited at retrospective exhibitions in Latvia.

At the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, Feders mastered the creation of compilated and generalized landscape compositions, supplemented by nature-based motifs and based on Old Masters traditions. In the early 70’s he actively developed his mastery; During this time, his work was dominated by the influence of romanticism, a dramatic depiction of nature, such as “Landscape with Cloudy Clouds” (1873) and “After the Storm” (1874).

Subsequently, his landscapes were increasingly determined by the aesthetics of contemporary realism; in his painted insights, topographical precision and motif localization intensified. According to the orientation of the realists to objectively true image, the artist carefully and in detail captured the specifics of geographically geological, floral, atmospheric and illuminated landscapes, for example, “Landscape near Svjatogorsk Monastery, Kharkov Governor” (1881), “Christs” (around 1881).