“Balustrade” is a painting presented by Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar at the fourth exhibition of the Mir iskusstva (World of Art) group in 1902. By participating in the exhibition, Igor Grabar achieved not merely recognition but tremendous success and most importantly was honored by fellow artists. Even before the exhibition was opened, two leading museums — the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum of Alexander III — competed for one of the nine paintings by Igor Grabar.

“Balustrade” was also among the paintings sold at the exhibition. It was purchased by the entrepreneur Ivan Morozov who was known among the collectors for his fascination with French and Russian painting of the late 19^th — early 20^thcentury.

Igor Grabar was a painter, restoration artist, art historian, enlightener, museum curator, and teacher. He studied at the Lyceum of Tsarevich Nicholas, Moscow Society of Art Lovers, Law School at Saint Petersburg University, and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. After graduating from the Academy, Igor Grabar went on a foreign trip with his friend Dmitry Nikolayevich Kardovsky “to study world art in a detailed and comprehensive manner”. The two artists visited Paris and later Munich where they studied at the best private school of painting run by Anton Ažbe. Being a gifted painter, Igon Grabar soon became assistant to Ažbe, and for two years, the school was known as the School of Ažbe and Grabar. This was when Grabar reexamined the importance of color in painting and discovered its unlimited potential.

Igor Grabar painted “Balustrade” in September 1901 at Naro-Fominskoye, a picturesque old estate near Moscow, that belonged to the Shcherbatov princes. The landscape seems to have been painted easily, effortlessly, in a single sitting. Despite its fragmentary nature, the composition is carefully crafted. The landscape features a corner of an ancient two-story manor, part of a porch, and a park with golden trees. The painting encourages the viewer to expand the original image in their mind and interpret it as part of an infinitely larger world. Igor Grabar imbues nature with a wide range of feelings and strives to create an image inspired by a color palette. In his art, the techniques of Impressionism are combined with the lyricism of Russian painting which originated in the art of Vasily Polenov and Isaac Levitan. The artist escapes to a world where humans and nature are one, a world of inner harmony that Grabar finds in the country estates of the past.