The museum collection keeps a portrait of the battle painter Franz Roubaud. In 1968 it was painted by the master of the monumental and decorative genre, the painter Vasily Grandi. He portrayed Roubaud against the background of a battle scene. The artist is dressed in a white shirt with a bow tie and a black frock coat and holds brushes and a palette in his hands. On the table there is a sketchbook and tubes with paints.

Vasily Grandi was born in 1890 in the city of Lgov in the Kursk province. In 1909 he entered the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists in St. Petersburg. Grandi’s teachers there were the famous painters Nicholas Roerich, Arkady Rylov and Nikolai Samokish.

In 1915, Grandi began participating in various exhibitions. His works included portraits, landscapes, genre and battle paintings, which received approving reviews of contemporaries. In 1929, the artist exhibited his canvases at exhibitions of the Artists' Association named after Ilya Repin, the “Zhar-Tsvet” society and others.

In 1922, Vasily Grandi moved to Moscow. It was here that he painted to order and drew posters. The most famous works of the artist during this period were illustrations for the works of Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol, as well as landscapes. In the 1920s — 1930s, the artist took part in many Moscow exhibitions. At the same time, he became interested in decorative painting and created the canvases “Fortress by the Sea”, “Autumn”, “Holiday on a Countryside Street” and a series of paintings “Ancient Russian Architecture.”

Grandi also painted on commissions from museums. For example, for the State Historical Museum, the artist created a large canvas “Peasant Uprising in 1839”, and for the Museum of Moscow History — “The Battle at the Nikitskih Vorot”. After the war, his works “Letter from the Front”, “Evacuation of the Wounded”, “Front Road” also entered various exhibitions. In the late 1940s, with a group of leading battle painters, Grandi worked on updating the “Panorama of the Borodino.”