Year 1969 Artist Nikolai Timkov | Type Oil on board Created 1969 | |
Dimensions 100 cm × 150 cm (40 in × 60 in) Location private collection, Russia Similar Portrait of Catherine Balebina, Cafe Gurzuf, House with Arch, Nevsky Prospekt, Portrait of Yevgeny Mravinsky | ||
Russian Winter. Hoarfrost (Russian: Русская зима. Иней) is a painting by the Russian artist Nikolai Timkov (1912-1993) made in 1969. It depicts a winter view of Tver land, a picturesque corner near the Academic Dacha.
History
In the artistic style of Nikolai Timkov, who was one of the Honored Artists of the Russian Federation and one of the leading representatives of the Leningrad School of Painting, this picture has a special place in the Russian artistic movement of the time. In the halls of Saint Petersburg Union of Artists opened in 1993, the author exhibited it in the center of the exposure. The painting shows the Msta River bank near the village of Valentinovka where Timkov lived and worked in 1960–1990 years, and where as aptly noted by art historian Mark Etkind, it was a "primary landscape workshop" of Nikolai Timkov. Old poplars under the fluffy snow caps in the bluish frost passed as the epitome of beauty and grandeur of Russian nature. In the picture, perhaps for the first time so clearly and convincingly demonstrated new qualities in the artist's landscape painting - monumental imagery solutions, which arose after a trip a year ago in the Urals Region, as well as good spirits decorative and intensity of color. Another quality of the picture, which draws the attention of art historian Alexander Simuni in his article for the catalogue of the French exhibition of 1994, is a high professional skills what sets this work in the art of contemporary landscape painting.
The painting was exhibited for the first time in 1975 at the solo exhibition of works by Nikolai Timkov in the Exhibition Halls of the Leningrad Union of Artists. The painting was reproduced in the exhibition catalog. In 1982 the painting was presented at the solo exhibition of Nikolai Timkov in the halls of the Moscow House of Artists at the Kuznetsk bridge, shown later in the Air Force Academy named after Yuri Gagarin, and in the famous Star City near Moscow. In 1994 the painting «Russian Winter. Hoarfrost» was displayed in Pont-Audemer, France, at the exhibition of works of masters of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists. The painting was reproduced in the exhibition catalog. In 2012 painting "Russian Winter. Hoarfrost" was exhibited in "Manezh" Central Exhibition Hall on Art Fair devoted to 80th Anniversary of Saint-Petersburg Union of Artists. The painting was reproduced in the exhibition catalog. In 2007 "Russian Winter. Hoarfrost" was published among others Timkov's paintings in the book "Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School" by Sergei V. Ivanov.