The collection of the Sevastopol Art Museum named after Mikhail Pavlovich Kroshitsky houses a painting named “In an Old Home” by the Russian artist of Polish origin Stanislav Yulianovich Zhukovsky (1875–1944).
Stanislav Zhukovsky was nicknamed “a poet of noble estates”. He was one of the most significant representatives of landscape painting of the late 19th — early 20th century. At the beginning of his career, after graduating from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he was a follower of Isaac Levitan and realistic traditions close to those of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions. However, soon, relying on the carefully studied experience of Russian and European artists of the time, Zhukovsky developed a style of his own. Directness and freshness of perception of nature, along with the poeticization of landscape images, characteristic of the Moscow school of painting, brought Zhukovsky closer to the painters who formed the core of the Union of Russian Artists. He became one of the founding members of this exhibition association in 1903.
In the 1910s, the art of Stanislav Zhukovsky was dominated by interiors. The artist mostly found the subjects for his works in old homes and mansions, with their libraries, drawing rooms, antique furniture, and portraits, which are today perceived as the heritage of the lost culture of Russian nobility preserved in painting. At the same time, Zhukovsky’s interiors are not museum halls, but the familiar environment in which a person lives and acts. The theme of estate itself was appealing to the artist. Maybe, something about his early childhood or some genetic memory of a lost cozy house made the artist turn to this favorite and inexhaustible motif. Stanislav Zhukovsky did not just reproduce on canvas real items surrounding their owners throughout their life, but — similarly to landscape painting — recreated the atmosphere of their emotional existence. Zhukovsky was particularly keen on rooms furnished with Empire style mahogany furniture and decorated with portraits of the first half of the 19th century.
