In the Pavel Vlasov Hall of the Boris Kustodiev House Museum, there is an Astrakhan Art Club membership card that once belonged to Nina Kaspiyeva.
In the late 19thcentury, women began to actively pursue art education. The Astrakhan Art Club also included women. At different times, there were between four and eight female members of the club, while the total number of participants varied between 44 and 52. The artist’s sister Yekaterina Kustodieva also joined the club.
Unfortunately, little is known about the female participants, including Nina Kaspiyeva. She is believed to be the daughter of Fyodor Kaspiyev, a State Councilor and the land captain of the second city district. Nina Kaspiyeva became a regular member of the club in 1901. This membership card is dated 1903. It features a cardboard-mounted, typographically printed image of various art paraphernalia placed against the background of Astrakhan as viewed from the Volga River. The objects include an easel with a painting resting on it (interestingly, it is Ilya Repin’s “Barge Haulers on the Volga”), a palette and a glass with brushes, paints, a triangle, a protractor, a statue of the head of Apollo, compasses, and even a photo camera.
To understand why the membership card was designed this way, one need only take a look at the list of the club’s members. Most of them were amateur artists, representatives of diverse professions. However, there were also professionals who had graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts. In addition to Pavel Vlasov, these included Nikolay Bobrov who taught drawing and calligraphy in a realschule, and Alexander Melikov who taught icon painting in a school of theology. One of the features of the Astrakhan Art Circle was that some of its most active members were architects. Over the years, members of the club included Karl Baldi, Sergey Karyagin, Viktor Valdovsky-Varganek, Adam Malakhovsky, and Pavel Shkatelov. Well-known city photographers, including photo studio owners such as Mikhail Kozlov, Vladimir Sergeyev, and Sofia Bobrova also actively contributed to the club’s work. During the early years, the club included icon painters such as Gennady Serov, Mikhail Tsvetkov, and Dmitry Shepelev.
The Astrakhan Art Club, founded by Pavel Vlasov,
existed between 1896 and 1919.
