“I am in Abramtsevo Once More..."[1]

“Everything that Vrubel tried his hand at was classically good. I worked with him in Mamontov's studio at Abramtsevo and I would look at something he was working on, be it a sketch or some pitcher or vase, or a head of an African woman or a tiger, and I would think 'everything here is where it should be', that there is nothing which could be re-done. That, I think, is the mark of classicism. He had the ability to express something of 'himself' in even an insignificant ornament.”[2]
Alexander Golovin

Mikhail Vrubel’s creative fascination with ceramics began in 1890, soon after his arrival in Moscow in autumn 1889. There, thanks to his old friends Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin, he became close with Savva Mamontov, a vivid and multifaceted character, someone who was possessed of a special sensitivity to new trends in art along with an ability to recognise talented people and understand the essence of their gift. A major entrepreneur and patron of the arts, in the 1870s and 1890s, he collected a circle of artists, later known as the Abramtsevo Circle, which spanned the generations: Ilya Repin, Vasily Polenov, Viktor Vasnetsov and the sculptor Mark Antokolsky from the older generation; Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Yelena Polenova, Apollinary Vasnetsov, Mikhail Vrubel, Mikhail Nesterov and Ilya Ostroukhov, among others, from the younger generation.

Mikhail VRUBEL. Lily. Decorative Motif. 1895-1896
Watercolour, gouache, charcoal on paper. 43.8 × 45.2 cm
© Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Vrubel was a natural fit for Mamontov’s circle of kindred spirits, among whom the value and uniqueness of each creative personality was insisted upon. There was an atmosphere of artistic brotherhood, rich in creative explorations, playfulness, wonderful theatrical transfigurations and serious musings on the paths of the development of Russian art. By this time, the Mamontovs’ home was well known as a major cultural centre. Among the ideas that thrived within the brotherhood were those of the cult of beauty, the aestheticisation of the Russian past and the development of society’s taste via the introduction of art into the outside world.

The Church of the Saviour Not-Made-By-Human- Hands (1881-1882, design by Vasily Polenov and Vik tor Vasnetsov), which has gone down in architectural history as the first example of the “Neo-Russian” style, an important facet of Russian Art Nouveau, had already been built on Mamontov’s estate near Moscow thanks to the collective efforts of the Abramtsevo circle and the estate’s woodwork studio was already in existence under the aegis of Yelizaveta Mamontova and Yelena Polenova, with its mission of “capturing the still living creativity of the people ... and giving it an opportunity to unfold itself.”[3] Amateur theatrics were also thriving - Mamontov organised the Russian Private Opera (1885-1891; 1896-1899) based on the experience he acquired on the stage at his home. The Russian Private Opera was a place for the popularisation of the Russian opera repertory and the development of a unified staging scheme for performances, as well as forming the basis for the blossoming of the art of theatrical design within the country.

Mikhail VRUBEL. Italy. Night in Naples. 1891
Watercolour, whitewash, lead pencil on paper mounted on cardboard. 57.5 × 70 cm.
© Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

In December 1889, Vrubel accepted Mamontov’s invitation to move into the latter’s home on Sadovaya Spasskaya Street in Moscow. Mamontov commissioned him to create the design for a domestic staging by his circle of “King Saul”, based on a piece written by himself and his son, Sergei (the premiere took place on January 6, 1890). The artist made the sketches for the sets and painted them together with Serov. Even in these early efforts at theatrical work, Vrubel managed to bring something new to the art of stage dressing, demonstrating “in this matter, his powerful, all-encompassing talent”.[4] Immediately after this, he created watercolour sketches for and then painted the curtain of the Mamontov’s private theatre (1891).

The whole way of life in Mamontov’s home, along with its owner’s ability to “awaken and create enthusiasm all around him” (Viktor Vasnetsov claimed that “working with him, it’s no effort at all to have your head not just in but above the clouds”[5]), helped Vrubel’s to feel in his element and brought him a new tide of energy. On May 1, 1890, he wrote to his sister Anna: “You know that I spent all winter in Moscow and that now I am still here. Vasnetsov was right when he said that I would find useful competition for myself here. I really have done some work purely out of an “I will not give in!” impulse, which is no bad thing. I feel that I am stronger, i.e. that many of my more platonic, idealistic ideas have been fleshed out. But the mania of absolutely having to say something new does not
leave me... The only thing that is clear to me is that my explorations are entirely in the technical field.”[6] The first thing that comes to mind upon reading these words is that the artist’s explorations in the technical field are based on his innovations in the painting “Demon Seated” (1890, Tretyakov Gallery). This feeling is all the stronger given that, in his next letter to Anna on May 22, Vrubel writes: “I have been painting my Demon a month already. That is, not my monumental Demon, which I will paint in time, but the ’demonic’ one - a half-naked winged figure sits with its arms around its knees, with a sunset in the background, gazing at a blossoming meadow from which flower-laden branches stretch out to it.”[7]

Mikhail VRUBEL. Demon Seated. 1890
Oil on canvas. 116.5 × 213.8 cm. © Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Vrubel’s painting matched the Romantic-Symbolist expression of the “rebellious human soul” that was a feature of Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “Demon”. The texture of the canvas’s surface, with the gigantic figure of the Demon filled with an otherworldly sadness, is constructed of wide, dynamic brushstrokes combined with paint applied with a palette knife, which resembles mosaics of colourful tesserae. The figure of the Demon and the spreading lilac of the horizon were born of the same rules as the exotic flowers, created as if by art itself. The landscape dreamed up by the artist, with its plants resembling shards of brittle, luminous minerals in angular forms, became the basis for a new, fantastical world. It is no coincidence that, while he worked on the piece, the artist didn’t lose his consciousness of the novelty of his work and his “mania” for saying “something new”. In the same letter, after the words: “The only thing that is clear to me is that my explorations are entirely in the technical field,” follow the lines: “a specialist in this field needs to work; the rest is already done for me, there is but to choose.”[8] The possibility cannot be excluded that these words about his explorations in the technical field refer to, among other things, Vrubel’s thoughts on a new field of applied arts, ceramics, to which he would turn exclusively in the summer of 1890. It is in precisely this field that specialists - technicians and artisans - “need to work” for the concept of the artist to be realised. Indeed, the latter need only “choose” the variant that matches their concept from the items born of the furnace.

As far as we are aware, the first mention of the ceramics workshop in Abramtsevo, which was organised by Mamontov immediately after the studio of Carpentry and Chiselling, dates to March 6, 1890. Yelizaveta Mamontova wrote to Yelena Polenova: “There are lots of pieces done in the studio that we are planning on firing next week.

Savva [Mamontov] was here at Maslen- itsa and began building an extension to the workshop for a muffle kiln, specially for the pottery. The moulding of tiles is also going along at its own pace”[9]. By comparing the dates of the letters, we can conclude that Vrubel created the sketches for the stove tiles while working on the canvas “Demon Seated”, making use of the knowledge he acquired “via a concentrated study of flowers”[10] while creating the decorations of St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral in Kyiv. The unbelievable flower-crystals we see in the painting remind one of the fact that, while in school, Vrubel was a devotee of natural science and created, according to his sister, “a whole system of crystals from chalk”[11]. We should also mention the classes of Pavel Chistyakov that Vrubel took at the Academy of Arts, which gave him a clear system for the construction of forms. It consisted of the expression of an object’s structures via an orderly discovery of plans, from the most general and large-scale down to the most minute, so that the object acquired new facets and expanded across planes like a whimsical crystal. The analytical nature of Chistyakov’s method was, in Vrubel’s own words, the very formula of his own “living relation to nature”[12].

The ceramics workshop in Abramtsevo began its work not only with an educational aim (the teaching of a new craft to teenage peasant boys), but also with a practical task: the restoration of the ruined stoves and kilns of the old estate house, where, at random intervals, the brilliant colours of 17th and 18th century tiles could still be made out. And, of course, the artists also saw new creative possibilities for themselves in this business, apart from their desire to resurrect a forgotten folk craft by studying its secrets and renovating the stoves.

Many artists conceived a passion for ceramics, such as Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Viktor and Apol- linary Vasnetsov, Vasily Polenov, Alexander Kiselyov, Maria Yakunchikova-Weber and, later, Alexander Golovin and Mamontov himself, who spent considerable time in the workshop, and his son Andrey. Vrubel became a real professional in this field and his creativity in this branch of art, an entirely new one for him, came to characterise both the image and the highest achievements of the Abramtsevo ceramics workshop. Vrubel’s interest in majolica was rooted in the rare variety of his talent as an artist, an artist who was a born colourist and decorator, capable of thinking in terms of plastic volumes, and possessed of a remarkable constructive cognition along with an ability to “create illusions for the soul”[13] via his flights of artistic and decorative fantasy. In the field of ceramics, he had an opportunity to materialise his matured artistic concepts in monumental, decorative pieces in three dimensions that were organically infused with colour and shot through with musical rhythm.

Having become acquainted with the special characteristics of majolica, which is distinguished by very fine interplays of the tones of glaze that make it resemble precious stones, and with the plasticity of clay, that benign ceramic material, having understood the wide narrative-semantic opportunities it afforded the artist, Vrubel again and again returned to ceramics in new artistic projects. With the cooperation of Pyotr Vaulin, a talented young chemist whom Mamontov had invited to Abramt- sevo, Vrubel was to produce fantastical flowers and ornaments of astounding beauty on tiles for stoves and fireplaces, on dishes and vases of various configurations, which are impressive in the freedom with which they were moulded and the exquisiteness of their colour-tonal schemes. They are entirely comparable with the exotic, crystalline and futuristic plants that can be seen in the “flowering meadow” of the painting “Demon Seated”. During various periods of the ceramic workshop’s activities in Abramtsevo and Moscow, the artist created more than 150 pieces of majolicaware and sketches for them[14].

For Vrubel, as for the other artists working in the workshop at the time, tiles were, at first, the main subjects of their experimentation, both in technical terms (with various glazes and reliefs) and in terms of the development of forms and colours of compositions on each particular tile, understood as a flat surface of a type to which artists were well used. Tiles were, as in the 17th and 18th centuries, the units that were employed to form repeating rows of facings or large surfaces with carpet ornamentations on stoves or fireplaces. However, the motifs of the patterns, the methods of stylising plant forms and the way in which the image was implanted on the surface were all unusual - they differed significantly from the decoration of the old models.

An example of the artist’s work on ornamentation can be found in Vrubel’s teaching activity at the Stroganov Academy.15 One of Vrubel’s students remembered how during their lessons, “the petals of an unknown flower, resembling an aster or a dahlia, were transformed into a crystal druse.[16] Collectively, they formed a flat pattern as if made of a crystal flower ornamentation.”[17]

A comparative analysis of Vrubel’s painting and graphic work with his work in majolica is one of the most engaging themes within the overarching study of his art, which was synthetic by its nature. The faceted forms of his painting and graphic work, in which “real items crystallised into mysterious ornamental forms, each with their own metaphorical meanings”[18] are wonderful material for comparisons with majolicaware.

The starting point for the transformation of flowers and leaves into stylised ornamental plant motifs forming festive ceramic chains on the exteriors of stoves and fireplaces was the “Stove Sleeping Ledge” (early 1890s), which was installed at the manor house in Abramtsevo. In this artwork - with its complex structure of decorative images and simultaneous severely logical overall construction, crowned by a cornice with the sculptural tile “The Libyan Lion”, Vrubel’s innate “flawless feeling for the relation of an object’s volume and the space in which it was located”19 found its expression. Insofar as this tile is an inalienable part of the stove, and tiles for stoves and fireplaces were the main items of the ceramic workshop, installed as the piece was constructed, this can rightly be considered one of the artist’s earliest pieces of ceramic sculptural work. In the early 1890s, high reliefs with lions’ heads were placed on the gates of the Mamontovs’ home on Sadovaya Spasskaya Street in Moscow. Later on, a high relief with a lion’s head was to also decorate the entry gates to the Mamontov’s manor in Butyrka, where the ceramic workshop was located from 1896. Examples of the high relief “The Libyan Lion” (1891, Tretyakov Gallery) can be found in various museums and private collections. From 1918, a graphic image of the sculpture became a distinctive emblem of the ceramic workshop of the studio of E.M. Metner, who acquired the Mamontov workshop after the death of Savva Mamontov.[20]

Vrubel often included some characteristic element into his graphic designs for stoves and fireplaces that would radically alter the impression received from these important interior pieces. Working on the decoration for one of the fireplaces in a wing of the Mamontovs’ Moscow house on Sadovaya Spasskaya Street, he introduced a high relief “Head of a Pharaoh”[21] (1892, Abramt- sevo Museum-Reserve) into the festive tile decorations. A sketch that Vrubel created for this fireplace and passed to Vaulin for further work has been preserved.[22] The sketch is a wonderful piece of material, which restores a previously missing link in our understanding of the way in which the partnership between artist and chemist worked at the Abramtsevo ceramics workshop. The sculpture “Head of a Pharaoh (Egyptian)”, like “Mask of the Libyan Lion” has “lived” an independent life as a work of art in its own right and can be found in museums and private collections (1892, Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve, Vasily Polenov Museum-Reserve, the collection of Pyotr Aven).

Along with his work on tiles for stoves and fireplaces, Vrubel worked with no less inventiveness and creative energy on all imaginable types of vases, cachepots, vessels and various other kinds of domestic objects. From the early 1890s comes the piece “Vase with Cuspidate Leaves” (early 1890s, Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve) with its cylindrical form and deep decorative embossing so characteristic of his early works. The branches with cuspidate leaves arranged around the body and ending in free-flowing strokes of clay form a laconic, uncomplicated pattern. A rather different example can be seen in a round-shaped vase decorated with simply placed leaves: “Vase” (1890s, Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve). Among the pieces that stand out thanks to their decorative exquisiteness is the “Vase with Embossed Handles in the Shape of Sirins”23 (the collection of Pyotr Aven). It is decorated with brown, red and light ochre glazes and the handles project from both sides in the form of stylised sirin-birds with their powerful wings wrapped around the vase’s body and form an unusual embossed decoration that organically emphasises the piece’s overall volume.

Another piece that belongs to the early years of the workshop’s activity is “Vase with Stylised Images of Fish and Wave Meanders” (collection of Pyotr Aven), and “Oval Vase”, decorated with embossed flower ornamentation and various coloured glazes, can be encountered in a range of museums and private collections. Each example of this work produces a completely unique impression (1890s, Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve, State Historical Museum (“Vase”), collection of Pyotr Aven (“Vase with Flower Ornamentation”)). A range of Vrubel’s vases contains narratives from various literary works encoded within them, which emerge on a careful examination of the (apparently arbitrary) curves of the embossing, among them “Poet” and “Krylov’s Fables”. The exquisite patterning of “Decorative Dish” is full of enchantment (all 1890s, Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve). Also interesting are the cachepot “Faun” (about 1900, Stroganov Academy Museum) and the tile-insert “Peacock” (1890s, Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve).

Vrubel also produced a range of sculptural ceramic works in the first years of the workshop’s activity. Among them is “The Assyrian” (1890, Tretyakov Gallery), which was created for the staging of “King Saul” at the private theatre. Vrubel’s immersion in the work on the stage decoration for this production was so deep that biblical images long had a hold on the artist’s mind. Of particularly powerful resonance was the image of the Prophet Samuel, endowed with a terrible grandeur, mercilessly severe to any lapse from the norms of accepted morality and, at the same time, a wise seer, tormented by doubts. Despite its small size, the sculpture is monumental thanks to its precise plastic arrangement of volumes, underlined by the use of blue and brown coloured glazes (we can find them in the tiles of one the Abramtsevo stoves) and also the ideally precise work with instruments.

Another of the artist’s early works, “The Egyptian Girl” (1891, Tretyakov Gallery), took shape in the artist’s imagination thanks to a real-life scene full of charm that occurred during an evening tea party at Abramtsevo. Vera Mamontova, the daughter of Savva Mamontov, was whispering some secret to her friend, Lyolya Prakhova, who was a guest at the Mamontovs’ house at the time. Vrubel, entering the room, witnessed the exchange. According to the memoirs of Nikolai Prakhov, the artist exclaimed, “Speak in whispers! Speak in whispers! - I have just thought of something. It will be called ’The Secret’.”[24] Diving into the world of arcane symbols, which had always attracted him, a day later, he presented them with a sculptured head he had created, decorated with a band bearing the Egyptian symbol “Uraeus”. The rhythmics of the sculpture, in which the head of Vera can still be made out, also contain traces of Egyptian ritual portraits that are emphasised by this symbol. The image was open to many different interpretations, speaking of the “eternal” as a philosophical understanding beyond time and containing a hidden prophesy voiced by the girl’s whispering lips.

In the summer of 1891, Vrubel was living in the village of Davydkovo on the outskirts of Abramtsevo and working on the estate at the ceramics workshop. He was entirely taken with the spirit of national antiquity being resurrected in the circle. “I am again at Abramtsevo and I am again overcome, or rather again I hear that intimate national note, which I so want to capture on canvas and in ornamentation. That is the music of a whole person, undivided by the abstractions of the orderly, differentiated and pale West,”[25] as the artist expressed his feelings to his sister in one of his letters from that summer.

That autumn, Vrubel set off with Mamontov to Italy in order to study modern ceramics. They joined Yelizaveta Mamontova, who had travelled there with their children and Yelena Prakhova. This encounter with local schools of ceramics and study of the methods by which Italian potters were resurrecting “terracotta relief” and “ancient Italian ceramics” widened the horizons of Mamontov’s and Vrubel’s conception of the new techniques in ceramics. It was probably in Italy that Mamontov decided to put the Abramtsevo workshop on a solid technological footing and expand the ceramics business.

A month and a half later, Yelizaveta Mamontova visited Vrubel’s workshop in Rome with her children and was amazed by the fact that the artist “had painted a watercolour with the life-size head of the Snow Maiden against a background of a snow-covered pine tree... How original, that he should come to Rome in order to paint a Russian winter,”[26] she wrote in a letter to Yelena Polenova. Vrubel’s step-sister, Varvara, wrote the same in a letter to Anna Vrubel dated January 9, 1892: “Misha [Mikhail] is satisfied but not delighted by Rome; he sings the praises of Russia’s mighty nature and poetry and then paints ‘The Snow Maiden’ in a snowy-silvery fur coat with an emerald-decorated hat, her face that of a pretty young girl of the Great Russian type, against a background of snow-spattered spruces.”[27] Vrubel himself informed his sister Anna that he was planning on painting a large painting of the “The Snow Maiden” “against a snowy twilight” in a letter sent from Moscow on September 7, 1892, a few months after his return from Italy.[28]

Returning to Moscow in July 1892, the artist wrote to Anna: “I am again in Moscow, or Abramtsevo rather, and again surrounded by the thoughts I spent eight months resting from: a striving after pure and stylish beauty in art and a fanciful personal happiness in life... To speak more plainly: I am again managing a factory of tile and terracotta decorations (in particular, for the decoration of a chapel above the tomb of Andrey Mamontov) and the building (to my own design) of an extension to the Mamontovs’ home in Moscow, which is to have a luxurious fagade in the Roman-Byzantine taste. The sculpture will all be my own work.”[29]

After his trip to Italy, Vrubel most likely reworked his sculpture “The Egyptian Girl”. At the 1896 All Russia Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, where the work was exhibited along with others from the Abramtsevo ceramics workshop, it was singled out by a reviewer of the exhibition: “A very refined and elegantly finished head of an African woman.”[30] They were referring, of course, to Vrubel’s “The Egyptian Girl”. The “elegant finish” noticed by the reviewer was made possible by the Abramtsevo workshop’s having acquired a high level of technical production of pieces, which was only possible after their return from Italy.

In his memoirs, Vsevolod Mamontov writes about how Vrubel “became so interested in this utterly new activity that, one winter, he lived practically exclusively at Abramtsevo, working all the time at the ceramics workshop.”[31] The intensive efforts at the workshop of which Mamontov wrote may relate to the second half of 1892 and winter months of 1893.

It is likely that, precisely during this period, Vrubel created the model for the sculpture “Girl with a Flower Crown” (1890, Tretyakov Gallery), which bore a resemblance to “The Egyptian Girl”. The stylistic closeness of the two pieces is so great that examples of “Girl with a Flower Crown” were often named “The Egyptian Girl” in exhibition catalogues or museum inventories (for example: “’The Egyptian Girl’. Variant (with flowers on the head)”[32]). There is also a coincidence in the configuration of the two characters they are both filled with a “sphinx-like detachment”. Studying the faces of Vrubel’s female acquaintances at this period, one’s eyes linger instinctively on that of Yelena Prakhova, who Vrubel had seen whispering her secrets to Vera Mamontova. The daughter of Adrian and Emiliya Prakhov, she was spirited, musical, and artistically talented.[33] She served as a model for Vrubel’s drawings more than once when he was living in Kyiv. Among the artist’s ceramic works from the early 1890s, we see her features in Vrubel’s sculpture “Girl with a Flower Crown” (Abramtsevo Museum- Reserve)[34], as well as in a sculpture of the same name but with a different iconography, although clearly including the features of Prakhova’s face ("Girl with a Flower Crown”, 1890, Tretyakov Gallery). One can agree with colleagues from the Russian Museum who have given their exemplar of “Girl with a Flower Crown” a second name: “The Snow Maiden”[35]. Presumably, the link between the image of the Snow Maiden and Yelena Prakhova formed in the artist’s mind before his trip to Italy, where he began to develop it initially in the form of a preparatory watercolour sketch that Yelizaveta Mamontova saw in the artist’s workshop. Later, Vrubel shared his desire to paint “’The Snow Maiden’ against a snowy twilight” with his sisters Anna and Varvara,[36] although the idea never received its ultimate incarnation in painting.

If we think back to the artist’s words from his letter to his sister written before his trip to Italy in the summer of 1891 about the national note which he “wanted to capture on canvas and in ornamentation”[37], along with the other letter he wrote on his return from Italy in July 1892: “I am again in Moscow, or Abramtsevo rather, and again surrounded by the thoughts I spent eight months resting from: a striving after pure and stylish beauty in art and a fanciful personal happiness in life,”[38] then guessing why the “Snow Maiden” appeared in his mind while living in Italy should pose no difficulty. To express art’s national note “in a pure and stylishly beautiful manner”[39] was a task that kept its hold on Vrubel no matter where he happened to be located, and Italy only strengthened his feeling of attachment to his natural roots. The question is rather more complicated if we turn to the matter of “fanciful personal happiness”. The artist’s initials, “MV”, are moved out onto the most visible spot, on the right-hand side of the bust, which is extremely rare for his majolicaware - a riddle that leaves a vast space for possible interpretations.

The Abramtsevo ceramics workshop was awarded a gold medal at the 1896 exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod and, in the same year, Mamontov transferred the workshop to Moscow. The first period of its activity, the “estate period”, comes to an end, and the second, or “Moscow” period begins, when the enterprise functioned under the name of the “Artistic-Ceramic Pottery Workshop ’Abramtsevo’” or (from the early 1900s) “Abramtsevo. Artistic Pottery Factory”. It was often simply called the “Mamontov Pottery Factory at Butyrka”[40], or even more simply, “Mamontov’s Butyrka Factory”. The pottery workshop was located in Moscow on a plot of land rented by Mamontov in the name of his daughter Aleksandra Mamontova, a site that was situated on 2nd Yamskoye Polye Street, just behind the Butyrka Gate. All the residential and auxiliary buildings, along with the workshop itself, which together formed their own unique little estate of six buildings, were all designed by the young architect and artist Ilya Bondarenko. The workshop fully resumed its work only towards the autumn of 1897 and, roughly a year later, Vrubel began work here on the creation of models for sculptures on the theme of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas “Sadko” and “The Snow Maiden” (1898-1899).

Describing the singularity of his opera “Sadko”, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote: “But what sets ’Sadko’ apart from my other operas, and perhaps from other operas in general, is that it is an epic recitative ... Flowing like a scarlet thread the whole length of the opera, the recitative imbues the piece with that epic national character which can only be fully appreciated by a Russian.”[41] We can identify that same “epic” character in the image of Sadko that Vrubel created in his sculpture “Sadko Playing Gusli” from the Tretyakov Gallery (1898-1899). Above all, the artist prized in Rimsky-Korsakov’s work the composer’s ability to create almost plastic forms in sound and the combining of the real and the fantastical in his music on themes from romantic fairy-tales and Slavic mythology. This ability was, in fact, to a large extent also a quality of Vrubel’s own creativity. The epic but realistic figure of Sadko, the gusli player and singer, dressed in an old-Russian costume decorated with national ornaments, is harmonically combined with the fantastical inhabitants of the underwater kingdom.

One of the first pieces Vrubel produced on the theme of the opera “Sadko” was likely the model for the sculpture “The Sea King” (high relief) (1898-1899, Tretyakov Gallery) or “Mask of the Sea King”, as the sculptor himself called it.[42] The high relief depicts a character from the national epic as he might have appeared in the folk imagination. The hair and beard of the “The Sea King” are stylised as sea waves and, together with the little fish, comprise a singular ornamentation that bears resemblance to the fanciful woven designs of Baroque (shiplike) wooden carvings, examples of which were stored at the collection of folk art at Abramtsevo. Although Vrubel never exhibited a particular interest in the use and development of this sort of prototype, unlike Yelena Polenova and some of the other artists of the Abramtsevo circle, a link with folk traditions can be discerned very plainly in this particular piece. It is to be found in the lavishness of the decoration, characteristic of the folk aesthetic, which transforms any object decorated with carving or painting into a single decorative whole.

In his sculpture “The Sea King” (example from after 1899, Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve), Vrubel created a different image in which one can make out the features of Anton Bedlevich, who performed the bass role of the Sea King in “Sadko”. Unlike the high relief “Mask of the Sea King”, in the expression of the sculpture “The Sea King,” we can make out clear theatrical elements.

In the smooth, flowing lines of the sculpture “Sea Princess” (1897-1900[43], Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve), we see recreated the fragile and tragic image of a fantastical subject of the underwater kingdom, one of the mermaids who inhabit this fairy-tale epic world born of folk imagination.

The poetic and fairy-tale colouring of Rimsky-Kor- sakov’s music, so close to the artist in terms of its “interwoven rhythmic ornamentation and singular musical decorativeness,"44 found a reflection in the fantastical tones of Vrubel’s majolica sculptures: “Volkhova” (Tretyakov Gallery), in which one can easily make out the features of the image created by Zabela-Vrubel while performing the role on stage at the Mamontovs’ theatre, and the image of the sculpture “Sadko” (Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve), vividly embodied in the opera by Anton Sekar-Rozhansky, the singer of the main role, in a performance that garnered him a reputation as a first-class artist. These sculptures were produced using the technique of reduction firing, which imbued the colours with an iridescent shine and a mysterious flicker. The secret of the appearance of metallic and nacreous highlights on glazes after the firing process was discovered by Pyotr Vaulin via experimentation during the winter of 1899, a process which he describes in his “Life Story”[45]. In the opinion of Vil Nevsky, the “wilful emotional creative impulse of Vrubel, which encouraged the development of the technician’s experimental abilities”[46] played no small part in the discovery. This opinion, held by a figure who has spent many years researching and restoring Vrubel’s ceramics, is based on the artist’s obvious passion for silvery-grey glazes with a metallic sheen, which, in combination with gold, helped him to achieve effects akin to those of reduction firing from the very beginning.[47]

The artist’s majolica works, created using this new technology, sparkling with highlights now gold, now silver, which seemed to flow down along the shape of the sculpture, emphasising the colours of the glaze, ideally conformed with the aesthetic of the Art Nouveau style, with its striving towards delicate beauty and the mysterious. Many of Vrubel’s sculptures, the models for which were produced in 1898 before the invention of the new technology, now received a new rebirth using the reduction firing technique. At the same time, the initial manufacturing method (oxidation firing) was preserved in the workshop even after 1899. The version of the sculpture “Sadko” from the Tretyakov Gallery, for example, was carried out using oxidation firing - “Sadko” (1898-1899, Tretyakov Gallery).

During the Russian Private Opera’s tour to St. Petersburg in February-March 1898, Vrubel and his wife, Zabela, became particularly close to the composer. They met often in St. Petersburg during the tour and, afterwards, in Moscow. Rimsky-Korsakov loved to talk with the artist about music and to share with him his thoughts and plans. It was likely at one of those meetings in St. Petersburg that the conversation touched upon the planned sculptures on the theme of the operas “Sadko” and “The Snow Maiden”, because, after Vrubel and his wife’s departure from St. Petersburg, the composer wrote the artist a letter that ended with the words: “Reminding you that Berendey and Bermyata still await your attention, I remain your devoted N. Rimsky-Korsakov.”[48] In his answer, Vrubel wrote: “Many thanks for your letter. The reference to Berendey summoned the pleasant perspective of free summer occupations to my mind... since then, thanks to your kind influence, I have decided to devote myself exclusively to the Russian fairy-tale genre.”[49]

Mikhail VRUBEL. Sadko Playing the Gusli. 1898
Majolica. 51 × 49 × 30 cm. © Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Vrubel did not manage to start work on these sculptures in the summer of 1898. That autumn, he was finishing his work on the mural plafonds based on the opera “The Snow Maiden” at the Solodovnikov Theatre in Moscow, restored after a fire (not preserved). In the autumn of the same year, he began work on sculptures based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas “Sadko” and “The Snow Maiden”, work that continued into 1899, as witnessed by the “List of the Works of Vrubel M.A. 18961906” compiled by Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel.[50]

Vrubel’s series of majolica sculptures on the theme of Rimsky Korsakov’s opera “The Snow Maiden” ("King Berendey”, “Lel”, “Kupava”, “Spring”, and “Mizgir") provide us with a window into the artist’s fascination with the distinctive beauty of the Slavic myths, tales, and legends that were embodied in the opera “The Snow Maiden”, itself a recreation of a fantastical fairy-tale world drawn from images in oral folk tradition. The strong feelings felt by members of the Abramtsevo Circle upon hearing a reading of Alexander Ostrovsky’s spring fairy tale in 1880, and during its subsequent staging at their domestic theatre, are well known. “We experienced it so deeply and fully that it became something like our very own ’Snow Maiden’,” reminisced Viktor Vasnetsov.[51] Rimsky-Korsakov also fell in love with Ostrovsky’s fairy tale and was enthralled by a “pantheist-pagan mood"[52] when he wrote the opera. While working on the sculpture series, Vrubel, a sensitive devotee of the composer’s music, dived once again into the poetic world of the Bernedeyans, ruled by the good King Berendey, wise in lived experience, who had discovered one of the most important rules of nature: “All that lives should love.”[53] In Vrubel’s sculpture “King Berendey” (Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve), which may be the first of the series, we can see with complete clarity the physiognomic traits of the opera’s composer.

Mikhail VRUBEL. Tsar Berendey. 1898-1899
Majolica, relief, multi-coloured painting. 46 × 34 × 16 cm
© Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve

The monumental, despite its small size, sculpture of Berendey is executed “in a powerful contouring of stately forms.” It is also distinguished by the filigree work along the relief of the ceramic surface, its refinement using various types of comb instruments, brush handles and moulded decorations in order to express as fully as possible the beauty of the national ornamentation and unique weave of Berendey’s clothes. Reduction firing endowed the fine outline of the figure with an added glistening effect of coloured glazes. Their multi-coloured modulations are imbued with the musical-poetic lyricism of Rimsky-Korsakov.

The image of the gentle piper and young shepherd Lel in the sculpture “Lel” (Tretyakov Gallery) is also permeated with the fabric of the opera’s music, with its folk melodies and “shepherds’ jigs"54. The composer’s creative philosophy was dear to Vrubel: in his sculpture, Lel “melts in the quiet of pure melody - soft, wistful, thoughtful.”[55] He is presented wearing a crown of wild flowers on his “silken curls”, with a shepherd’s reed pipe in his hands, which he uses to delight the girls of the surrounding area with songs. In this image, Vrubel really did find “a national note” that rang out in the form of the sculpture in all of its many examples and colour schemes (Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve, The All-Russian Museum of Applied and Folk Art, the collection of Pyotr Aven).

In December 1898, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote to Vrubel: “I feel terribly like talking, and perhaps even arguing, with you about art.”56 They maintained an active correspondence over the course of the year. In a series of letters, they discussed the repertoire of Zabela for a proposed Russian Symphonic Concert in St. Petersburg, but the themes touched upon in the letter go far beyond concrete questions of the singer’s participation in the concert. They had to do with global questions that were agitating the whole of the Russian musical establishment at the time. Rimsky-Korsakov gives Zabela as an example of a lyrical soprano, stating that “I have never heard the role of the Snow Maiden sung so powerfully,”[57] but before this, he says that Zabela could also have sung the role of Kupava. Vrubel took this statement as a starting point when he created the image of Kupava in his sculpture of the same name (Tretyakov Gallery), by giving it the facial features of Zabela. The singer, who was possessed of an abundantly expressive voice, was capable of conveying the finest shades of feeling of the loving and abandoned maiden seeking the protection of King Berendey. The glaze with flashes of gold, strengthened by reduction firing, emphasises the fragility and defencelessness of Kupava.

However, if the embodiment of Zabela’s image in the sculpture “Kupava” seems entirely logical, then its repetition in the sculpture “Spring” requires some thought as to the motives for such a decision. Vrubel wrote of the resemblance in a letter to Zabela in the summer of 1904 after a visit to Butyrka: “I also liked my sculpture. Do you remember my figure of spring, waving away the birds and finches, with an affectionate languor in her eyes, smile, and movement? It is very similar to you, i.e. the form; the expression too, by the by.”58 Spring waving away the birds is an image that expresses literally and fantastically the popular belief of the ancient Slavs that, in spring, the birds return from the fairy-tale land of Vyriy to blossoming springtime. In the soft, flowing yet clear forms of the sculpture “Spring,” the artist recreates a gentle, optimistic image embodying the life-giving properties of nature after the winter frosts. Although the role of Spring was intended by the composer for a mezzo-soprano, the possibility that Zabela might sing it was likely also considered. It is not for nothing that Vrubel emphasised in his letter about the sculpture “Spring” the similarities of physique and temperament between the sculpture and his wife.

One of the central figures of the sculptural group representing the main characters of the opera “The Snow Maiden” is “Mizgir”, a rich merchant guest from the Ber- endeyan trading quarter and the favourite of Kupava. The sculpture is in an unusual pose, half turning, which emphasises the romantic hero’s dynamism, a well-dressed and shapely young man in a patterned kaftan, well- worked with relief ornamentation, along with an elegant hat, self-confident, bold and used to having his own way. At the same time, apart from his bravery, his ability for romantic gestures and self-sacrifice can also be felt in Mizgir’s fine features and his appearance in general.

Fireplace "Mikula Selyaninovich and Volga Svyatoslavovich" by Mikhail Vrubel inside the Handicrafts Pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. Reproduced from the "Mir Iskusstva" ("World of Art") magazine. 1900. (No. 21-22).

Vrubel’s work on the ceramic sculptures on the theme of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas “Sadko” and “The Snow Maiden” represented the first phase of the Abramtsevo Ceramic Workshop’s preparations for participation in the 1900 World Fair in Paris. Very soon after, the artist began work on the development of the construction and facing of a fireplace on the theme of the Russian epic “Mikula Selyaninovich and Volga Svyatoslavovich” for exhibition at the World Fair. Having exhausted the possibilities of the old forms of decoration when restoring the stoves and fireplaces at the manor houses in Abramtsevo and Moscow, Vrubel proposed a new construction for the fireplace, which was to flatten it out, making it level with the wall, its fagade becoming a part of the architectural decoration. An example of such a construction, produced in five copies, each with their own colour scheme, is his fireplace “Mikula Selyaninovich and Volga” (1898-1900, Tretyakov Gallery). The basis for the piece was provided by the panel “Mikula Sely- aninovich”, which Vrubel created for the All Russia Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod (1896). A master of ceramic material, Vrubel tore apart the traditional patterns of stove design, based on repeating elements, by replacing square tiles with shaped pieces carved from a whole moulded and dried-out sheet on which the figure had been drawn beforehand. These pieces are then given an initial (bisque) firing, before being decorated with different coloured glazes and fired again. The composition of the ceramic picture is formed as if from precious stones whose forms are obedient to the artist’s will. The finished pieces were then attached using brightly coloured seams, reminiscent of the way in which Vrubel created his compositions in stained glass, resurrected in the spirit of Art Nouveau.[59] At the same time, the method for the division of the ceramic panel into curved fragments responded to the striving of the Art Nouveau style for smooth, flowing lines.

Mikhail VRUBEL. Fireplace “Mikula Selyaninovich and Volga”. 1898-1900.
Majolica, ceramics, multi-coloured painting. 225 × 275 cm. © Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The construction of the fireplace itself represents a synthetic fusion, including elements reminiscent of Old Russian architecture, folklore motifs and a vivid palette of various colour coatings, which, taken together, gives the piece a simultaneously nationally symbolic and ultramodern note within the stylistics of Art Nouveau. The piece was multifunctional: it was a fireplace, which is to say that it had the utilitarian function of giving warmth; it organised the interior space; and it also fulfilled the role of a large ceramic painting, revealing on its flat surface an epic tale.

Mikhail VRUBEL. The Princess of Dreams. 1896
Oil on canvas. 750 × 1,400 cm. © Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The experience of transferring a painting into ceramics would later be used by Vrubel in order to create the panel for the gable of the Metropol Hotel (1898-1903), based on his painting “Princess of Dreams” (1896, Tretyakov Gallery), created for the same exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod (1896). That said, the technique used to create the ceramic panel of the same name differed from that used to create the fireplace. The painting of coloured glazes and enamels took place after the first firing, and the craftsmen who placed them together after the second firing made no particular efforts to make the seams stand out. The decorative effect, according to the artist’s concept, was produced by the overall interaction of colours. The viewer is presented with a unified decorative and monumental work of art with a clearly identifiable narrative[60].

Mikhail VRUBEL. The Princess of Dreams. 1896
Oil on canvas. 750 × 1,400 cm. © Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The well-known applied arts specialist Aleksander Saltykov distilled the essence of Vrubel’s discoveries in ceramics thus: “Vrubel created the culture of fairytale reduction firing majolica in sculpture and the culture of monumental ceramic artworks in architecture.”[61] These discoveries were recognised at the 1900 Paris Exposition, at which the artist’s majolica sculptures on the theme of Rim- sky-Korsakov’s operas “Sadko” and “Snow Maiden”, along with his fireplace “Mikula Selyaninovich and Volga”[62] and his decorative pieces, were all exhibited. Vrubel received a gold medal in his capacity of “exhibit worker” (at Savva Mamontov’s exhibit). The award represented pan-European recognition for the artist’s work in the field of majolica, which demonstrated a new synthesis of traditional motifs on fireplaces, vessels, and everyday objects, as well as an organic pictorial and formal unity in sculpture.

Vrubel's ceramic work, which flourished over the course of more than a decade, developed along two sometimes intertwining axes. The first was defined by his attraction to national traditions, the other by his attraction to the general European style of Art Nouveau. In the beginning of the article, we discussed Vrubel’s trip to Italy in 1891-1892 with Savva Mamontov to study modern ceramics production. In the autumn of 1892, they set off on another trip, likely with the same aim, to France. In the wake of the 1900 Paris Exposition, French ceramics in the Art Nouveau style began to exert a noticeable influence in the European art space. Various vases and small-scale sculptures were exhibited in galleries, their images were published in magazines, and they themselves were discussed in artistic circles. It is no coincidence that researchers can identify similarities between some of Vrubel’s pieces (particularly the early ones) and French ceramics in the Art Nouveau style, including the work of some of its best practitioners in the final third of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (Theodore Deck, Clement Massier, Auguste Delaherche, Ernest Chaplet).

Another movement which exerted an influence on the formation of Vrubel’s ceramic style as an artistic phenomenon was that of Art Nouveau Danish porcelain. This was attributable to the active participation in the creation of Abramtsevo ceramics of Pyotr Vaulin, to his experiments with coloured glazes and coatings, and to his invention of the reduction firing technique. In the final analysis, Vrubel’s unique creative genius melded harmoniously and consistently with the most significant achievements of European Art Nouveau. This, in turn, was instrumental in the creation of a unique variant of the Art Nouveau style in turn-of-the-century Russia, which is often known as the National Romantic style. “In the years that followed, Russian Art Nouveau ceramics could count on such a quantity of talents, allowing it to reach such a level, that the post-Revolutionary generation would come to measure themselves against it.”[63]

When, after the artist’s death, the question of a memorial to Vrubel came up at a meeting of the Society of Architects and Artists in April 1910, the Murava Art Ceramics Workshop, which considered itself his artistic successor, responded immediately with a letter to the editors of the “Rech” newspaper: “We, who are indebted to Vrubel as the foremost ceramicist of our time, hope that this memorial will, thanks to the combined efforts of all those who honour his memory, become an opulent mausoleum, worthy of his great genius. Architects, mosaicists, stonemasons, stained- glass artists, metalworkers and others - we call upon you all to build a mausoleum in Vrubel’s memory. Mikhail Yegorov, Aleksei Filippov, Pyotr Galkin, Sergei Malyutin, Sergei Konenkov, Mikhail Lvov.”[64] This was truly popular recognition, for Vrubel was in the first rank of those artists who, as Alexandre Benois put it, “strove for the decoration of life itself ... who set themselves the aim of pouring their soul, their personality ... not only into paintings and statues, but into their whole life, into their whole surroundings.”[65]

1. M. Vrubel, Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. Leningrad, 1976. P. 57. (Below: M. Vrubel: Correspondence; Remembering the Artist.)
2. A. Golovin, Meetings and Impressions: Letters; Memories of Golovin. Leningrad, Moscow, 1960. P. 28
3. Ye. Sakharova, V.D. Polenov, Ye.D. Polenova: Chronicle of a Family of Artists. Moscow, 1964. P. 362.
4. V. Mamontov, Memoirs of Russian Artists: Abramtsevo Artistic Circle. Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve, 2012. P. 58. (Below: V. Mamontov, Memoirs.)
5. V. Vasnetsov, The Artist's World: Letters, Diaries, Memories, Judgements of Contemporaries. Moscow, 1987. P. 109.
6. V. Vrubel, Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. P. 55.
7. Ibid. P. 55-56.
8. Ibid. P. 55.
9. Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve. Manuscript 1137. The letter has been dated by Ye.N. Mitrofanova, deputy academic director of the Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve.
10. S. Yaremich, Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel: Life and Work. Moscow, 1910. P. 102. (Below: Yaremich. Vrubel).
11. M. Vrubel, Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. P. 146.
12. Ibid. P. 42.
13. Ibid. P. 95
14. A. Saltykov, “The Characteristics of Vrubel’s Monumental Ceramic Painting” in Russian Ceramics of the 18th - 19th centuries. Moscow, 1952. P. 617. (Below: A. Saltykov, The Characteristics of Vrubel’s Monumental Ceramic Painting)
15. Vrubel taught the course the “Stylisation of Flowers” at the Stroganov Academy from 1898 to 1901, during the tenure of Nikolai Globa as its Director.
16. Druse is a term from the science of mineralogy, which signifies an aggregate of crystals.
17. Quoted from: P. Suzdalev, Vrubel: Personality, World view, Method. Moscow, 1984. P. 228-229.
18. K. Makarov, “Vrubel’s Ceramics” in Decorative Art of the USSR. 1981, No. 2. P. 32.
19. O. Arzumanova, A. Kuznetsova, T. Makarova, V. Nevsky, Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve: Outline-Guide. Moscow, 1984. P. 229.
20. Mamontov’s heir at the Abramt- sevo Ceramic Factory, now a part of E.M. Metner’s studio, was Aleksei Filippov (see Ceramic Assembly: From the archive and collections of A.V. Filippov. Moscow, 2017). Thanks to the efforts of Aleksandra Mamontova, much of the majolicaware was transferred from the ceramics factory in Butyrka to the newly organised museum at Abramtsevo in about 1921 (including pieces by Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily Polenov, Viktor Vasnetsov, Valentin Serov, Savva Mamontov, Andrey Mamontov, Aleksander Kiselyov, Aleksander Matveyev; see O. Arzumanova, History of the Museum in Facts and Documents 1917-1930. Issue 3/90. On the 70th Anniversary of the Abramtsevo Museum. Moscow. P. 19). Therefore, despite some losses, the Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve is home to the biggest collection of pottery from the Abramtsevo Workshop and, in particular, of Mikhail Vrubel’s majolica work, of any Russian museum.
21. At the Abramtsevo Museum- Reserve it is called “Head of an Egyptian”.
22. Central State Archive of Literature and Arts, St. Petersburg. The Pyotr Vaulin Fund. D. 3. Sheet. 1b. (Published: K. Likholat, A. Rodenkov, At the Creative Workshop of P.K. Vaulin. St. Petersburg, 2013. P. 36).
23. Vrubel used the mythological image of a prophetic bird, a bird- maiden, in a whole range of ceramic pieces, in particular in the vases “Sirins” (Early 1890s), located in the Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve, the State Museum of Ceramics (at the Stroganov Academy), the Kuskovo Estate, the Russian Museum and The All-Russian Museum of Applied and Folk Art.
24. M. Vrubel: Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. P. 207.
25. Ibid. P. 57.
26. Ye. Sakharova. P. 470.
27. M. Vrubel: Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. P. 317.
28. Ibid. P. 58.
29. Ibid. P. 57.
30. Quoted from: Ye. Arenzon, “Abramtsevo in Moscow: The History of Savva Mamontov’s Artistic-Ceramic Enterprise” in Museum 10: Art Collections of the USSR; The Art of the Russian Art Nouveau. Moscow, 1989. P. 96.
31. V. Mamontov, Memoirs. P. 61.
32. Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel: 1856 -1910; 100 Years since his Birth; Exhibition of his Works, exh. cat., Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 1957. P. 179.
33. See the photograph of Yelena Prakhova and “Portrait of Yelena Prakhova” by Viktor Vasnetsov on pp. 115, 114 in this edition.
34. The sculpture is so named and dated to 1899 - 1900 by the Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve.
35. "Girl with a Flower Crown” ("Snow Maiden") Mikhail Vrubel from the Collection of the Russian Museum. St. Petersburg, 2006. P. 252-253.
36. M. Vrubel: Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. P. 58.
37. From a letter written by Mikhail Vrubel to Anna Vrubel. [Abramtsevo. End of August. 1891 in M. Vrubel: Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. P. 57.
38. Ibid.
39. The phrase “national note” was linked in the aesthetic of the Abramtsevo Circle with their common desire to restore their artistic heritage and more specifically with Alexander Ostrovsky’s play “The Snow Maiden” and Nikolai Rim- sky-Korsakov’s opera of the same name. The former was performed on the domestic stage (1882) and the latter at Savva Mamontov’s private opera company (1885) with decorations by Viktor Vasnetsov, who succeeded with his clothes and props in discovering, in the words of Alexandre Benois, “the principle of old-Russian beauty” (A. Benois, History of Russian Painting in the 19th Century. Moscow, 1995. P. 389).
40. The variation in names is not surprising if we consider that the name “Mamontov Pottery Factory” was not registered anywhere; production took place in the context of a private artistic workshop. According to catalogues, the Abramtsevo ceramics were represented at the Paris World Fair in 1900 and the International Ceramics Exhibition in St. Petersburg in 1901 by Savva Mamontov’s daughter, Aleksandra Mamontova (See: M. Nashchokina, “Abramtsevo ceramics workshop: 1890 - 1917” in O. Arzumanova, V. Lyubartovich, M. Nashchokina, Abramtsevo Ceramics in the Collection of the Moscow State University of Engineering Ecology. Moscow, 2000. P. 30).
41. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, Chronicle of my Life in Music. Moscow, 1955. P. 205.
42. In a letter from the summer of 1904 written to his wife, Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, the artist shared his impressions of his pieces, which he had seen during a visit to the Mamontovs’ house at Butyrka: “The good ones are: the mask of the Libyan lion and the mask of the sea king with golden fish tangled in his wavy hair and beard. You can use it as a vase for visiting cards, but I will certainly get it and the other out of Savva Mamontov to decorate at least the dining room (The Sea King and Spring) and for my room - the head of the lion...” (M. Vrubel: Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. P. 85).
43. In the Tretyakov Gallery, models of all Vrubel’s sculptures on the theme of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas “Sadko” and “The Snow Maiden” are dated to 1898-1899.
44. P. Suzdalev. Vrubel: Music; Theatre. Moscow, 1983. P. 209.
45. P. Vaulin, My Biography. Typewritten copy, 18.02.1935. Russian Museum, Manuscript Section, Fund 250, Item 4, Sheet 3. (Below: Vaulin, My Biography).
46. V. Nevsky, “Vrubel and Technological Innovation at the Abramtsevo Ceramics Workshop” in Theses of Reports given at the Academic Conference held during the Exhibition: Savva Mamontov and Russian Artistic Culture of the 2nd Half of the 19th Century. Moscow, 1992. P. 60-63.
47. Ibid.
48. Letter from 29.04.1898 in M. Vrubel: Correspondence; Memories of the Artist. P. 101.
49. M. Vrubel: Correspondence; Remembering the Artist. P. 88.
50. Russian Museum, Manuscript Section. Fund 34. Item 10. Sheet 1.
51. V. Vasnetsov, “Speech at a Gathering of the Abramtsevo Circle, January 1893 in Abramtsevo: Artistic Circle; Painting, Graphics, Sculpture, Theatre, Workshops. Leningrad, 1988. P. 259.
52. Rimsky-Korsakov. Chronicle. P. 137.
53. A. Ostrovsky, “Snow Maiden” in Collected Works in 10 Volumes. Vol. 6. Moscow, 1960. Pp. 430-431.
54. Rimsky-Korsakov. Chronicle. P. 137.
55. K. Makarov, Vrubel's Ceramics. P. 33.
56. Quoted from: L. Barsova, Vrubel: No comments. St. Petersburg, 2012. P. 93.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid. P. 85.
59. A. Saltykov, The Characteristics of Vrubel's Monumental Ceramic Painting. Pp. 617-618.
60. The author would like to express their sincere gratitude to A.V. Vorobyova, ceramics conservator of the Abramtsevo Art History and Literature Museum-Reserve, for her expert opinion on the creation of the fireplace and the ceramic panel.
61. This exemplar of the fireplace was discovered a few years ago in the collection of the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille in the city of Lille, France. Documents shedding light on the circumstances of its purchase have not yet been found by the museum.
62. Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov on August 12, 1900: “He was completely unsuspecting, and all of a sudden, he received a medal” (L. Barsova, Vrubel: No comments. P. 164).
63. Kirill Makarov, Vrubel’s Ceramics, p. 37.
64. Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Fund 1661, Opus 1, Item 2492. Quoted from: Abramtsevo: Artistic Circle; Painting, Graphics, Sculpture, Theatre, Workshops. Leningrad, 1988. Pp. 236-237.
65. A. Benois, History of Russian Painting in the 19th Century. Moscow, 1995. P. 387.