Vasily Helmersen

Wilhelm von Helmersen was born in 1873 into the Baltic German noble Helmersen family, he was the grandson of the genealogist Gregor von Helmersen. In 1899 he graduated from the Saint Petersburg University and started his career in the Ministry of the Imperial Court. By 1908 he rose to a Court Councilor and received the rank of Chamber Junker. In 1914 he quit the Ministry to work as an assistant director in the Palace Library of Nicholas II.

Since 1900, Helmersen was known for his silhouette artworks. He created illustrations to Eugene Onegin, War and Peace, Dead Souls, A Hero of Our Time, The Shot. His works were included in the exhibitions at the Imperial Academy of Arts.

After the Revolution, Helmersen worked in the State Russian Museum and in the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1930, he was arrested as a result of a purge in the state institutions and sent to one of the Gulag prison camps. In 1937, he was executed like many other victims of the Great Purge.

The most famous work of Helmersen was a series of 100 illustrations to Eugene Onegin. One of them was published in Vengerov's six-volume edition of Pushkin's works.

In 1910s Nikolay Lerner intended to publish an edition of Eugene Onegin illustrated by Helmersen, but this was not realized (most likely because of the World War and the Revolution).

In the Soviet period, another edition of Onegin with Helmersen's illustrations was prepared in the State Literary Museum to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Pushkin's death, but it was also canceled. The illustrations, however, were displayed in the State Historical Museum during the Pushkin Anniversary Exhibition in 1937.[1]

• List of Baltic German artists