Vasily Botkin

Vasily Botkin
Born	8 January 1812 [O.S. 27 December 1811] Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	22 October [O.S. 10 October] 1869 (aged 57) St Petersburg, Russian Empire

Vasily Petrovich Botkin (Russian: Васи́лий Петро́вич Бо́ткин; 8 January 1812 [O.S. 27 December 1811] – 22 October [O.S. 10 October] 1869) was a Russian essayist, literary, art and music critic, translator and publicist.

Vasily was the son of a wealthy tea merchant. His brothers were Sergey Botkin, a well-known physician, and Mikhail Botkin, a painter and art collector. Vasily was a moderate liberal in the 1830s and 40s, associating with members of the circle of Nikolai Stankevich, and with the Westernizers, including Mikhail Bakunin, Vissarion Belinsky and Alexander Herzen. Vasily was a man of expensive tastes, a connoisseur of art and music, and a polyglot. He travelled widely in Europe, meeting well known figures such as Karl Marx, Louis Blanc and Victor Hugo.

Vasily was the first Russian publicist to acquaint Russian readers with the works of Friedrich Engels (he wrote a summary of Engels's pamphlet Schelling and Revelation, part of his series German Literature, published in 1843 in the magazine Notes of the Fatherland). He published articles on art exhibitions as well as on William Shakespeare, E. T. A. Hoffmann and George Sand. In the field of music he wrote Italian and German Music (1839), On the Aesthetic Significance of the New School of Piano (1850), and works on Italian opera. Between 1847 and 1849 he published the essays Letters on Spain in The Contemporary, which have remained his most popular works.

...
Wikipedia