The miniaturist and professor Nikolay Ivanovich Shishakov (1925–1998) was born in Mstyora. He attended the Mstyora Vocational School and later graduated from the Ivanovo Art College. Shishakov joined the artel “Proletarian Art” in 1954, and the Artists’ Union of the USSR in 1962. He was a laureate of the Ilya Repin State Prize (1970) and held the titles of Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1972) and People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1980).

His style — the construction of composition, the interpretation of numerous characters and the understanding of color — was based on the principles of easel painting, characteristic of paintings on peasant themes by Russian artists of the mid-19th century. The box “N.A. Nekrasov in Mstyora” is one of the first works by Nikolay Shishakov.

The plot depicted on the box is based on real events. In the settlement of Mstyora, the outstanding poet and writer Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov met twice with the owner of a lithographic workshop and bookseller Ivan Alexandrovich Golyshev. They got acquainted in May 1853. The poet’s stay in the settlement in the summer of 1861 turned out to be especially fruitful. On the eve of his arrival, he completed his poem “Korobeiniki” (“The Peddlers”) that had a truly national character and planned to publish it in a series called “Red Books”. The series was intended for the peasants, and therefore the books were cheap, printed on coarse paper.

Nekrasov and Golyshev agreed that the published poem would be distributed through peddlers from the towns of Vyazniki and Vladimir — those were traveling vendors who carried their goods in boxes (in “korobs” — in Russian). On November 7, 1861, the censor’s permission was given to publish the first such “Red Book”. It had a bright red cover and a large, clear font. Most of the copies of “Korobeiniki” were sent to Ivan Golyshev.

When sending these books to Golyshev on March 28, 1862, Nekrasov accompanied them with the following letter: