picture-book old village sprawls on the banks of the Ucha River, nestled among fertile green fields, groves of white-spined birches and velvety emerald pines, only a few kilometers from the metropolis of Moscow. This is the perfect setting for the cradle of an enduring Russian art, miniature painting on lacquered wood. This is Fedoskino.

According to historical findings, miniature painting in Russia emerged in the first half of the 18th century. In his book, Russian Lacquer Articles in Hermitage Collection (1964, I.N. Ukhanova quotes interesting information on the Petershoff restoration program. As the artist restorers were working on the badly damaged panels in the Chinese room of the Monplaisir palace of Peter the Great, they were to see that the panels were of lime wood, never used in China or Japan, but conventional material for Russian artisans. Later documents explained this mystery. A contract dating from June 1720 shows an agreement with "a team of ten painters headed by journeymen Ivan Tikhanov and Perfili Fedorov" for "gilt lacquerwork, Chinese-style, in a room in Petershoff." Ninety-four panels brilliantly imitating Chinese work were ready by February 1722, and were installed in October of the same year. "The imitation was so subtle that the later generations of artists and experts never had a shade of doubt that it was the real thing."

Similar skills were demonstrated by the artisans of the 18th-century Ural factories where they produced beautiful brass and iron kitchenware with lacquered ornamentations. They were described as an exquisite craft by the Ural explorer Academician Pallas.

The considerable popularity of lacquerwork in the 18th century lead to the opening of numerous workshops throughout Russia. A the turn of the 19th century, the Moscow and St. Petersburg provinces each had a dozen factories producing papier-mâché snuffboxes and trays, and tinplateware.

The leading enterprise belonged to the Korobov-Lukutin family. It developed out of a small workshop started by the merchant Pyotr Korobov in 1795 in Danilkovo, an estate near Moscow. The exquisite handicraft caught Korobov's fancy when he visited a lacquerwork factory in Germany. With a good eye for business and an artistic flare, he saw the great potential of this art in his home country. He brought home paints and lacquers, and hired German artisans to start his own factory. Soon local gifted artists were discovered who could teach their skill to these artisans, and the business of making lacquered snuffboxes got off to a great start.

At first, the Danilkov artists did not paint their boxes but decorated them with lacquered transfer portraits of Russian statesmen and pictures from history. Most popular were depictions of the most spectacular episodes of the Napoleonic war of 1812. The first painted snuffboxes did, nevertheless, appear in Korobov's lifetime.

In 1818, a year before his death, Korobov passed the factory management to his son-in-law Pyotr Lukutin. The business now flourished with a great assortment of products—beauty and utility graciously combined: cigarette cases, caskets, boxes for jewelry, matches and powder, and chessboards. Several delightful samples are now on display at the Hermitage and Moscow's History Museum.

A man of taste and tireless energy, Lukutin grew the business at a phenomenal rate: in mere five years, the number of painters exceeded fifty, and the factory school coached twenty apprentices at a time. In 1828, a royal edict gave the flourishing factory a trademark: Russia's coat-of-arms with Lukutin's full name or initials below.

Apart from precious and unique pieces sold at exorbitant cost, the Lukutin factory produced items that were more affordable, as well. The themes varied as much as the quality. For those that were destined for the aristocratic, well-educated Russian tastes, the subject matters were derived from the Russian and Western art: sophisticated allegories, scenes from the antiquity and modern history, still lives, portraits, etc.—all to reflect "the predominant artistic style of the time, with the opposing influences of Classicism and Romanticism, and the emergent realistic trends, all fantastically interlaced."

The cheaper pieces were directed to folk whose tastes were not as demanding nor were their pocket books as flexible. Simply put, this stuff was inferior in every aspect, in quality and in technique, with sugary idyllic air. The themes included folk festivals, prettified pictures of farm work, dressed-up lasses doing every-day chores, tender mothers, solemn graybeards, dashing troikas and ceremonious tea parties.

During the first half of the 19th century, the Lukutin factory saw a trend of its own emerging. Deep Russianness brought profound realism, but not at the cost of sentimental embellishment. Lukutin always followed a set pattern of treatment: dancers are always dashing, talkers full of well-wishing. Like the festive costumes, the well-fed, benign faces have but little common with life as it really was.

All this graceful sentimentality is not so naïve as it may seem—there is a clash of Dostoyevskian profundity between life as it should be, represented in the cloudless scenes, and life as it was, which the painters knew all too well from their personal lives.

A view of old Red Square. Mid-19th century.
From P. and A. Lukutin Factory. Box measuring 12x17x5.3cm.

Under Pyotr Lukutin, Russian miniature painting attained great artistic heights, with daring innovation in the subject matter and décor. But true artistic perfection appeared when Alexander Lukutin joined his father as factory manager in 1841. The business had no rivals in Russia and equalled the gems of French and German miniature lacquer painting. The techniques reached such sophistication that even British masters borrowed know-how from the Lukutin family.

Two oil-painting techniques had taken shape as the dominant by that time, termed the solid and the airy. Done in thick impasto, the first required filigree details and three-dimensional effect of an almost sculptural quality. Its rich colors, however, often went together with pearly transparency and refinement.

The airy technique used glazes. Superimposed in numerous layers on mother-of-pearl plaques, gold leaf or aluminum powder rubbed with cotton into the varnished surface, they produced a luminous effect. Often combined with solid colors of direct painting, they were refined and festive.

But let us not forget what was literally at the bottom of it all: papier-mâché. Translated from the French, it means chewed paper. Simple to produce, it has excellent plasticity and is as strong as most solid woods. Thus it also possesses the quality of being sculptable. A piece goes through several steps of preparation: the object, made of numerous layers of cardboard strips, is dried in special heated chambers, primed with black paint and heat-dried once more. Finally a piece is polished, coated in three layers of black and vermilion lacquer, polished again, and then varnished in transparent lacquer. At last, the piece ready to be painted. This technique survives to the present day.

At the death of his father in 1863, Alexander Lukutin became the sole master of this family business. It prospered as never before, with up to six thousand articles produced each year. The Lukutin enterprise knew no rival. But decline was imminent.

Alexander's son Nikolai inherited the family business in 1888, but showed no signs of being a big-time entrepreneur. Though an enthusiastic patron of the arts and Director of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, Nikolai found no satisfaction in running the family's workshops. He considered lacquer painting to be outdated and not high-class enough for his ambitions. Thus the family business was placed in hired hands between his rare visits. The production declined as did the quality and the philosophical profundity.

After Nikolai's death, his widow headed the business for two years, but she also relied on hired foremen to oversee matters. Without a dedicated leader, the Lukutin shops closed their doors in 1906. The artisans were left to fend for themselves without a sponsor. Some found employment with painters like Kruglikov and Borodkin, a formidable father-son team who were highly skilled in their craft and ran the Vishnyakov shop in a nearby village.

In 1910, the business was to get a new lease on life. Keeping it secret from Vishnyakov, ten former Lukutin employees mortgaged everything they owned and started cooperative production in Semenischevo village near Fedoskino. These artisans were able to bring the old Fedeskino tradition to its former glory.

A peasant girl going for water with an admirer. 1972.
By V. Antonov (born 1936). A box measuring 14x21x7cm.

In retrospect, the 100 pre-revolutionary years of Fedoskino painting show that it had passed through a truly heroic epoc. With commercial interests often running counter to the truth of art and beauty, with no education and open to many mutually contradictory influences, the painters always remained faithful to realism and preserved their refined techniques. They borrowed from the classics of easel painting, with masterly chiaroscuro, precise line and fine brushstroke—the best techniques for lacquer miniatures. Wrote G. Yalovenko: "Brought up on the best realistic traditions, the Fedoskino cooperative painters allowed grassroots realism to survive. They preserved the custom of the trade, the unique techniques and their high standards."

On the other hand, the Fedoskino artists could not easily overcome the inferiority they had developed when the enterprise was on the decline. That was why they clung to the traditional troikas, tea parties, folk dances and rural festivals. Top notch post-revolution painters like Platonov, the Semyonov Brothers, Borodkin and Ranovsky were the first to attempt to enlarge the thematic range, but it did not seem to be enough in the era of sweeping social upheavals, though brave strides were made towards contemporaneity.

Petrov's Landscape with a Herd was a real landmark in Fedoskino painting. Executed in the transparent technique, of which Petrov was the paragon, it presents a forest glade at sunset, with a cluster of oaks, lacy foliage against the golden sky, and the grass darkened with the shadows of the mighty tree trunks. In the foreground is a shepherd boy playing his pipe; two girls reclining nearby, backs resting against a tree stump, are lost in the sweet tune, forgetting about their baskets full of mushrooms, and cows are grazing nearby—a simple picture but so full of joie de vivre and love of life, with its colors and all-penetrating poetry. It took a truly free artist to make it, an artist of frankness and thorough knowledge of both easel and minature techniques. Petrov loved glowing colors: shining reds, emerald greens, and all shades of blue and yellow.

In 1931, apprenticeship was renewed in Fedoskino after a thirty-year break when, at the old masters' request, a vocational school was established with three- and four-year courses to train painters and modellers. By the early 1940s, among the graduates were the gifted Tochenov, Pashinin, Lipitsky, Tsar, A. and I. Strakhov, Sedova, Parfenov, Korsakov, Tardsov and many other excellent painters. Some were to become leaders to determine the Fedoskino progress for the next two or three decades.

World War II accounted only for a several months' hiatus, when the front line was a dozen miles away from the village. The Lukutin and other collections were safely hidden. Many painters joined the Army. The work soon revived, thanks to the Russian Federation government decision of February 7, 1943, to encourage folk arts and crafts with ensuing allocations.

The workshop was fully re-established with the postwar demobilization of prominent artists who had finished the Fedoskino school shortly before the war. Among them were Pashinin, Lipitsky, Rogatov and Orlov, whose memorable miniatures from recent war history appeared, such as Pashinin's Victory Salute and Lipitsky's Heroism at the Front and in the Rear.

A fairy-tale scene. 1977.
By VS. Kozlov (born 1955). Box measuring 12x10x5cm.

Traditional Lukutin subjects also survived. Subjects from Russian tales, landscapes, and still-lives were prominent, as well. Sketches from nature resulted in many wonderful landscapes by Strakhov and Rogatov, who endowed them with a touch of fantasy. Portraits of Pushkin, Lemontov and Lenin were no less in the vogue. P.S. Davydov's Maxim Gorky on the Volga deserves a special mention.

A touch of special human interest was added by an incident involving V. Borodkin, son of S. Borodkin, who had his right arm amputated during World War I. With careful and persistant training, he was able to develop his left hand enough to get back to the workshop. He created solid technique masterpieces: landscapes, still-lifes and genre scenes—mostly original interpretations of Russian and Western classics.

Among the great miniature artists of the post-war years are A. Kruglikov, V. Lavrov, I. Semyonov, A. Leznov, M. Popenov, D. Orlov, A. Koslov, and S. Monasov, to mention only a few. Each excelled in his own style, and contibuted some exquisite examples of the Fedoskino tradition. I. Platonov stands out for his lavish use of gold in his sophisticated landscape compositions, which went well with the tans and yellows of the freshly plowed soil and ripe wheat.

Z. Tsar was one of the first women painters to graduate from the Fedoskino school shortly before the War. She was able to produce quite a different affect using impasto. Characters appear three-dimensional with a fine play of color and masterly chiaroscuro—a reminiscence of the mid-19th-century Russian painting.

V. Lipitsky was one of the foremost painter in the Lenin theme—Leniniana. To Visit Lenin, Lenin Walking, Lenin with Children and Lenin with a Newspaper are emotional in their intense line and austere color. In the latter, Lenin is seen reading the latest issue of Pravda. Majestic in his unassuming simplicity, this piece is on par with the best of Lenin's portraits in oil on canvas, yet conventional in the Fedoskino idiom.

During the latter half of the 20th century, the Fedoskino art has gained its former glory, with great international appeal and interest. While the individual artists are far too numerous to mention in this connection, their personal contributions are the total sum of the glory of their art. We admire the powerful gift and perspicacity with which they brought the patterns of easel painting to their medium. The scenes are refined in their simplicity, precise in line and sophisticated in composition. The figures are three-dimensional, the colors festive, now emphasized by the mother-of-pearl or gold and silver inlays, now delicate and transparent. Drawing in equal measures on the folk art, easel painting and engraving—with examples surviving of each inspiration—miniature art is among the supreme acts of artistic creation. It is not surprising that an engaging dialogue is sustained between the object and the viewer. Clearly, papier-mâché miniatures exist as an art, not a craft, on par with mural and easel painting, with realistic imagery of profound aesthetic content.

Untitled with flowers. 1944.
By A. Leznov (1866-1946). Barrel, diam. 7cm, height 6cm.

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Resource: Fedoskino, Nikoilai Malakov, with Tatyana Butkova as the translator. Moscow: Izobrazitelnoye Iskusstvo Publishers, 1990.

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Many thanks to my dear friend Mrs. Leslie Hinchcliff-Edwards of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and Salt Lake City,Utah, for bringing me this handsome book from Russia from her trip there with a group of our children, including her daughter Kristen and my daughter Barbara. Barbara's enthusiasm for the miniature painting was catching; this work has been rewarding artistically and emotionally.

To see other examples and purchase Fedoskino articles, please, visit:

Palekh School

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This page was created on April 19, 1999
Most recent revision: March 3, 2007