Vasily Surikov was born in Krasnoyarsk into a cossack family. Surikov’s watercolors and drawings, which he created in Siberia, play tremendous role in his artistic career, they include dozens of completed and unfinished paintings and graphic works. The artist used them to show all the beauty and diversity of Siberia that inspired him. Surikov painted his home city — Krasnoyarsk — most often, he dedicated his paintings, watercolors paintings, and drawings to his home city.

At the end of his life, the artist felt he wanted to go back to his homeland — to see his father’s old house, his brother, fellows from Krasnoyarsk. He often visited Krasnoyarsk, coming there from Moscow. Here traveled a lot to the outskirts of the city — in Torgoshino, Bazaikha, Ladeikhi and other places. From those trips and walks he took a lot of etudes, drawings and sketches. He made a lot of his sketches in Krasnoyarsk, inside the city area.

His last visit to Krasnoyarsk was in 1914. During this trip, he created the last watercolor painting dedicated to his favorite city — ‘View of Krasnoyarsk near the Annunciation Church’. It is distinguished by a rapid manner of painting and refined colors — a combination of rich blue and terracotta shades. Vasily Surikov always thoroughly built the composition of the painting he was working on — at the Academy of Arts, he was even given a humorous name a ‘composer’. The central element of the watercolor painting from the Museum’s collection, is the Annunciation Church — at that time it had already been over 100 years old. The old building of the church rises above the city landscape, with its wooden and stone houses, above the city which is boiling with life.

When Surikov last visited Krasnolyarsk, he was already 66 years old. He was going to stay in his home city till the end of his life, his brother even planned to build a workshop for him in the courtyard of his father’s house. However, the artist was already suffering from his illness, soon he had to go to the Crimea for treatment, and in 1916 he died.