In 1920 part of the extensive art collection of Stavropol merchants Alafuzov was transferred to Stavropol Museum of Fine Arts. Paintings from that collection remained in the museum, the staff and art experts validated original names and provenance details of the paintings.
In the certificate drawn in the museum on December 18, 1920 one of the paintings was registered as follows: ‘Paint. by A. Meshchersky 1898. Landscape (oil). River. Cloudy day’. The painting arrived in the museum in a good condition: the intact canvas remained on the canvas-stretcher, the manufactory frame was made to resemble gold. The painting was later defined as a landscape On the River and proved to have been painted by Russian artist Arseny Meshchersky, ‘a painter of nature’.
Meschersky was born in Tver governorate. No data on his parents survived, but researchers believe that he may be a descendant of the aristocratic Meschersky family. Arseny received an academic education, he studied with one of the best landscape painters of the time — head of the landscape painting class in the Academy of Arts — Socrat Vorobyev. Later he continued his studies in Switzerland with Alexander Kalam, master of epic mountain scenes. At that time, Meshchersky’s paintings acquired the realism and solemnity characteristic of Kalam, but preserved Meschersky’s character. He focused in his painting on drawing accuracy and light, the main themes of his art were wildwood and Russian winter.
Meschersky’s landscape On the River from the Alafuzovs collection was the latest landscape painted by the artist. It has the same mastery but its motif is more customary to the Russian viewer: calm mirror like river surface, a boat on the shore with the figure of a man sitting in it. The color background is light. The painting conveys more Order and calm than his other works, but Meshchersky still adds a note of anxiety: the dark clouds in the visually heavy sky are about to pour rain.
Stavropol Regional Museum of Fine Arts displays two more paintings by Arseny Meshchersky, received from the State Museum Fund. The mountain scene from Vorontsov collection — in 1925 and the monumental painting Winter Evening in Finland from Soldatenkov’s collection — in 1928.
In the certificate drawn in the museum on December 18, 1920 one of the paintings was registered as follows: ‘Paint. by A. Meshchersky 1898. Landscape (oil). River. Cloudy day’. The painting arrived in the museum in a good condition: the intact canvas remained on the canvas-stretcher, the manufactory frame was made to resemble gold. The painting was later defined as a landscape On the River and proved to have been painted by Russian artist Arseny Meshchersky, ‘a painter of nature’.
Meschersky was born in Tver governorate. No data on his parents survived, but researchers believe that he may be a descendant of the aristocratic Meschersky family. Arseny received an academic education, he studied with one of the best landscape painters of the time — head of the landscape painting class in the Academy of Arts — Socrat Vorobyev. Later he continued his studies in Switzerland with Alexander Kalam, master of epic mountain scenes. At that time, Meshchersky’s paintings acquired the realism and solemnity characteristic of Kalam, but preserved Meschersky’s character. He focused in his painting on drawing accuracy and light, the main themes of his art were wildwood and Russian winter.
Meschersky’s landscape On the River from the Alafuzovs collection was the latest landscape painted by the artist. It has the same mastery but its motif is more customary to the Russian viewer: calm mirror like river surface, a boat on the shore with the figure of a man sitting in it. The color background is light. The painting conveys more Order and calm than his other works, but Meshchersky still adds a note of anxiety: the dark clouds in the visually heavy sky are about to pour rain.
Stavropol Regional Museum of Fine Arts displays two more paintings by Arseny Meshchersky, received from the State Museum Fund. The mountain scene from Vorontsov collection — in 1925 and the monumental painting Winter Evening in Finland from Soldatenkov’s collection — in 1928.
