The icon painter, restorer and miniaturist Nikolai Prokopievich Klykov (1861–1944) was born in Mstyora to a family of icon painters. He learned the art of painting icons from his father Prokopy Klykov.

In the early period of his career, Nikolai Klykov worked in the Mstyora icon painting workshop of Vasily Osipovich Shitov, where he studied restoration, and in Moscow in the workshop of Mikhail Ivanovich Dikarev. Later, Klykov became a teacher of icon painting at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and at the Stroganov Art College. In 1918–1922, he worked under Igor Grabar at the Board for Museums and Monuments of Art and Antiquities Protection.

Nikolai Klykov is considered one of the founders of the Mstyora school of lacquer miniature painting. He taught miniature painting on papier-mâché at the Mstyora Vocational Art School. His artistic style is based on the traditions of the Stroganov school; it is very decorative, with vibrant color palettes. Klykov was an innovator who discovered the landscape genre and adopted it for Mstyora miniature, depicting the characteristic features of the local landscape, the easily recognizable blue reservoirs in the floodplain of the Klyazma River.

The composition “Landscape” is simple, unpretentious in terms of plot and compositional structure, but complex in its color scheme and technique of painting. There is a river or a small lake in the foreground. Further, on the left side, cows, goats and sheep graze near a tree. In the center, a shepherd sits on a stump and plays a horn. To the right, under a sprawling tree, stand a man and a woman. In the background, there is a raised area of land with greenish-blue hills, which are devoid of the deliberate conventionality of Stroganov’s style. There is a dense forest of bluish-green trees on the horizon. The picturesque field is framed by ornamental stripes made with gold leaf. Along the edge of the lid and along the top of the box, it is decorated with a golden ornamental strip of stylized plants — an undulating stem with leaves and flowers.

Based on the miniatures of Nikolai Prokopyevich Klykov, Mstyora artists learn to carefully study the elements of the landscape, smoothly move from one plane to another, and convey the breath of nature through a harmoniously constructed composition and bright color scheme.