Feders, Julijs

(in Russian, Iulii Ianovich [Ivanovich] Feder; also spelled Fedder, Fedders). Born June 7 (19), 1838, in Koknese, in what is now Stucka Raion; died Jan. 19 (Feb. 1), 1909, in Nezhin, in what is now Chernigov Oblast. Latvian painter; one of the founders of the Latvian realistic school of landscape painting.

Feders studied under S. M. Vorob’ev at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1856 to 1862 and under E. Dücker at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts in 1875 and 1876. He taught drawing and drafting at educational institutions in Jelgava (1864–75), Belgorod (1876–86), and St. Petersburg (1886–98). Feders, the first Latvian landscape painter, began painting in the style of academic romanticism but later turned to the realistically precise depiction of Latvia’s countryside. His works include Landscape With a Stormy Sky (1873), The Perse River (1890), The Gauja River Valley (1891), Ruins of a Castle in Koknes (1904), and In Sigulda Park (1905–07), all of which are housed in the Latvian Art Museum in Riga.