"Nikolai Mescherin. The way out of fuss"

A joint project of the Museum of Russian Impressionism and the State Tretyakov Gallery

On February 13, 2019, the Museum of Russian Impressionism together with the State Tretyakov Gallery will present the project “Nikolai Mescherin. The Way Out of the Fuss ”is a retrospective exhibition of the artist, who was one of the faithful followers of the philosophy of French impressionism and one of the masters who introduced impressionistic techniques into Russian painting at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. The exposition will include more than 100 works from seventeen state and private museums and five large collections of Russian collectors.

Moscow, 1897. Entrepreneur Sergey Schukin begins to buy for his collection the work of French impressionists - Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas. Then he will be carried away by post-impressionists and will open his house to the public.

In 1897, another Moscow businessman, the son of the founder of the Danilovsk Manufactory, Nikolai Mescherin, also tried to comprehend a new art that could capture an instant in all its charm and beauty - air transparency, the elusiveness of light and transmit white without white paint. But Mescherin chooses a different path. At the age of 33, he leaves a successful family business and leaves away from the bustle of Moscow in a quiet estate of Dugino, where he takes up his brush and devotes sunset and predawn hours to working on an open-air with an easel.

In the 1890s, Claude Monet painted a series of 30 paintings, each depicting the Rouen Cathedral at different times of the day. The master seeks to catch the elusive light, to show its changing nature, to demonstrate that not only the object, but also the effects affect our perception and mood of the picture.

Almost the same experiments — the search for light and color — were carried away several years later by Nikolai Mescherin at the Dugino estate. The artist keeps a detailed diary where he makes notes of his observations. He writes a series of studies at sunset and dawn. The series of sketches first brought together will be presented at the exhibition.

In the 1890s, impressionist Edgar Degas combines his passion for photography with painting. Photography becomes an important step in the search for a more recent and unusual composition for his paintings.

The rich heir Nikolai Mescherin could also afford in many respects still unusual for Russia hobby - amateur photography. So far, 48 genuine prints have reached. The pictures were taken by the artist in Dugin and the vicinity of the estate in 1886-1887. Images of landscapes, hunting scenes, group portraits of Meshcherin’s relatives were transferred to the State Tretyakov Gallery by the restorer Nikolai Gagman over ten years ago and until that moment were stored in storage rooms.

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Nikolai Mescherin later took up his brush, but did not even graduate from the art academy, was able to earn the respect of his colleagues and to gather talented like-minded people: Igor Grabar, Isaak Levitan, Alexei Stepanov, Vasily Perepletchikov and others in his family nest - the Dugino estate near Moscow. Today, the house in Dugin has almost lost its historical features. In the Soviet years, he underwent a major restructuring. The works of famous guests of the old estate, dated to the beginning of the last century, at the exhibition will be next to Meshcherin’s paintings and sketches. A thematic blocks will allow you to travel through time through a change of seasons - winter, spring, summer and autumn.

For retrospective, the Museum of Russian Impressionism collects paintings from private collections and state collections throughout Russia: from Perm, Kazan, Ivanov, Vologda, Kursk, Vyatka, Astrakhan, Volsk, Krasnodar. Together with canvases and photographs of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the exhibition will feature exhibits of the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg) and Moscow IRRI, the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin, Museum of Moscow, State Museum of the History of Russian Literature V. I. Dahl, Museum of Musical Culture. M.I. Glinka.

To the exhibition "Nikolai Mescherin. The Way Out of the Fuss”The Museum of Russian Impressionism is preparing a half-hour soundpromenade. This will be a musical tour of the exposition, which the artist himself will conduct for each viewer. In the audio performance, the plots of the paintings will come to life, the most vivid and interesting details of the life of Nikolai Meshcherin and the inhabitants of the Dugino estate will be heard. The main characters - Meshcherin himself, his wife and friend Igor Grabar voiced by famous actors.