Arnold Vihvelin
Arnold Peeter Vihvelin was an Estonian printmaker and painter.
Early life and education
Arnold Vihvelin was born in Rääbise, the son Hans Vihvelin and Elisabeth Vihvelin. His father, a forester for, collected folk songs and sent them to Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald. The family had its own library. The future artist started painting at the age six, following the example of his older cousin, who was a portrait painter.In 1905, Vihvelin worked as a student at the Laiuse pharmacy. He graduated at the same time from. While he was earning a living as a draftsman in Tartu, he studied drawing and painting with in the evenings and attended Kristjan Raud's studio from 1906 to 1909. Vihvelin took part in the graphics competition held in Karlsruhe and won second place. In 1910, with a recommendation from Peter Barth he entered the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Saint Petersburg and immediately passed the exam to enter the third year. In 1911, he chose Ivan Bilibin's printmaking class as his specialty, while also attending the pen drawing class of Nikolay Samokish and. Peet Aren, August Roosileht,, Konrad Mägi, and others studied at the same school with him. Vihvelin studied in Saint Petersburg from 1910 to 1914.
From 1914 to 1920, Vihvelin studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts. He studied under Vasily Mate from 1914 to 1916. Some of his works from that time were published in the Estonian art students' magazine Ronk, which had a total of eight issues, containing poetry, prose, and art students' copies of works of art. Mate died in 1917, and the academy did not immediately find a new professor of printmaking. Vihvelin continued his studies in the landscape studio as a student of Arkady Rylov. Vihvelin graduated from the academy in 1918.