Russian sculptor and architect Vladimir Sherwood painted Mountain Lake currently held by Tambov Picture Gallery. He is also known as the author of portraits and landscapes. Today, the State Historical Museum in Moscow holds the biggest collection of paintings by Sherwood — the architect of the museum building.

The artist was born in Tambov Province, and his family moved to Moscow in 1837. When he turned six, Sherwood lost his parents: at first, his aunt took care of him, and then the boy got to an orphanage.

Vladimir Sherwood received his professional training in the Palace Architecture School. After that, he studied in Moscow School of Arts, Sculpture and Architecture, which he graduated from at 25 years of age as a landscapist. Sherwood practiced painting equally with architecture: depicted Evangelist topics and illustrated books.

In 1860, British author Charles Dickens invited Vladimir Sherwood to England to make portraits of the writer’s family. After 5 years, the artist returned to Moscow, where he created many portraits of his contemporaries: publicist Yuri Samarin, historian Vasyli Klyuchevsky, scientist Boris Chicherin and others. In 1868, he worked at the painting Christ Counseling Nicodemus, for which St.-Petersburg Academy of Arts assigned the rank of the third class artist to him. In four years, Sherwood received the title of the Academic of pictorial art.

Vladimir Sherwood was a frequent guest at Karaul estate of Boris Chicherin in Tambov Province. They were connected by their common patria chica; they also shared interest to history, philosophy and arts theory. Sherwood left some of his paintings in his friend’s house, Mountain Lake being one of them.

The experts are still unsure, when and where he created this landscape. However, most of them agree that the artist painted the lake near Paragilmen Mountain in the Crimea. The landscape is in realistic style, but features of romanticism also may be traced in this piece by Sherwood. The Romanticists often depicted treacherous weather, emphasized the spontaneity of nature and preferred dramatic dusky landscapes to the sunny ones.

Mountain Lake painting was hanging on the wall of the White hall in Boris Chicherin’s house. After the revolution, it got to Tambov Ethnography Museum, and in 1961, it was passed to Tambov Picture Gallery.