The exhibition of the Iskitim Museum of Arts and History features a painting by Ivan Petrovich Popov titled “A Portrait of Vasily Shukshin Painted from Life”.

It is unknown when exactly this portrait was painted. Supposedly, it was around the late 1960s. However, the artist’s touching narrative about the story behind this artwork has been preserved.

Ivan Popov recalled this moment in his autobiography “Diary of an Artist”, “I remember that cold day in May when I returned from my plein-air studies and came to see you. You were sitting on your green sofa. I noticed something strange about the way you were dressed. On your suit, under the lapel, there was a medal of the State Prize named after the Vasilyev brothers. You were also wearing a tobacco-colored turtleneck sweater. ‘Well, are you cold? ’ you asked. ‘What a May! Let’s start painting, ’ you suggested, leaning back on the sofa with your left hand and holding a cigarette in your right. ‘You mean, right now? ’ I hesitated. You shrugged, ‘Why wait? ’ You had always refused, saying that we could do it some other time. And then you surprised me, ‘I didn’t know how you felt about it.’ ‘How I felt? ’ I stammered. Oh, my dear friend, how did you expect me to feel? Of course, I wished to paint you more than once or twice. I say it now after you have been gone for so long. Why did I not persist back then? But what could I do if that was not what you wanted… And back then… I remember the chills I felt when I started laying out my sketch box and pinning the paper to the sketch board. The most important thing for me was to capture the head and the shoulders. I was agitated which was quite natural. The smarter your model is, the more difficult it is to portray them. Moreover, I was working in watercolor which was close at hand. First, a pencil, then a felt-tip pen, and finally watercolor. Your head was turned three-quarters to the side, but you also saw how anxious I was. It seemed that there were tears in your eyes. They appeared easily although you were not crying. This gave a sense of drama to the image. They say that this expression of anxiety remained on paper. What were you thinking about at that time and how did you manage to create such an expression? I felt like spiders were walking on my back. ‘Let’s take a break, ’ you said. You went to the bedside table, pulled out the top drawer, took out a medal, and opened your palm to reveal the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. ‘That’s what they gave me, ’ you said, slowly putting it back into the drawer. Afterward, I never saw you wear it. You approached the portrait and, after a long pause, said, ‘If you’re going to paint me again, this is who I’ve taken after, ’ and pointed to the wall where there was a photo of your grandfather, Sergey Fyodorovich Popov.”