The art collection of the Rusanov House Museum contains a sketch “‘Saint Phocas’ in the Barents Sea” by Nikolay Pinegin.

Nikolay Vasilyevich Pinegin was an Arctic explorer, artist and writer. He was born in the family of a provincial veterinarian in Yelabuga on April 27 (May 10), 1883. The future artist began his studies at the Vyatka school, and then continued at the Perm grammar school, from which he was subsequently expelled. Later, he entered the Kazan Art School, and in 1907 he passed the exams at the Academy of Arts but was able to graduate only in 1916.

As early as during the Kazan period, Pinegin became interested in the Arctic, and in 1909 he made his first trip to the Murmansk coast of the Kola Peninsula. On his first polar expedition in 1909, he met Georgy Sedov, and already in 1912, together, they set off on the schooner “Holy Great Martyr Phocas” on a voyage to Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. During the expedition of 1912–1914, Pinegin made the first documentary film about the Arctic, and his drawings were awarded the Kuindzhi Prize in 1917. For many years, Nikolay Pinegin worked at the Arctic Institute and participated in the first ice aerial reconnaissance together with the pilot Boris Chukhnovsky. In 1927–1928 Pinegin sailed twice to Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. He led the construction and became the first head of the polar station on the New Siberian Islands. Twice (as a member of the expedition and as the head of the voyage), Nikolay Pinegin traveled on the icebreaking “Malygin” to the Franz Josef Land archipelago and to the shores of Northern Yakutia.

Pinegin’s paintings and sketches are dedicated to the Russian North, to the sailors and pioneers of the Arctic. His works are housed in art museums in Arkhangelsk and St. Petersburg. Pinegin was one of the founders of the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg. An artist with his own style, Pinegin was also a talented writer. He began publishing his books in the 1920s. His works included “In the Country of Arctic Foxes” (1932), “70 Days of Struggle for Life” (1933), “Notes of a Polar Explorer” (1936). The most popular of Pinegin’s books — “Polar Explorer Georgy Sedov” — was published between 1941 and 1971 six times.