Fedor Semenovich Krpsnoyarov is one of the largest masters of Gorodets crafts.

What ideas do we have when we mention this craft? Some will present bright spinning wheels, boxes, screens and other products from Gorodets, exhibited in the halls of the State Historical Museum or the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Others will remember children's painted tables, chairs, shelves, toys. Many apartments are decorated with elegant and durable bread bins and cutting boards.

Elegant and durable Gorodets handicrafts can be found in many homes. These are cutting boards, boxes, salt shakers, children's rocking horses, etc.
However, there was a time when this trade was not given much importance. Thus, in one of the reference publications of the late 19th century they wrote about him: “Gorodets wood painting is one of the many handicrafts that existed in the Nizhny Novgorod province, owing its appearance to the infertility of the local lands.” And members of the commission for the study of the handicraft industry in Russia even spoke out like this: “Whoever has seen the drawings on the bottoms knows how rude they are.” And we should pay tribute to those representatives of the then Russian society who highly valued this art. Our great artists and the most insightful collectors turned out to be precisely such people. I.E. became interested in Gorodets painting before others. Repin, E.D. and V.D. Polenov, V.M. Vasnetsov, industrialist and philanthropist S.I. Mamontov, director of the Russian Historical Museum, historian I.E. Zabelin, trustee of the Handicraft Museum of the Moscow Provincial Zemstvo S.T. Morozov.
This exhibition was a unique phenomenon in the history of Russian art. The words written on the exhibition poster fully applied to the Gorodets painting: “Currently, the works of peasant artists have been removed from hiding and the museum has the opportunity to make them available for public viewing. Peasant art is almost unknown to anyone, and yet it is worthy of our deep attention. In many cases, the peasant artist can show new paths to our modern art.”

A noticeable revival occurred then in the study of crafts of the Nizhny Novgorod region. In 1924, a handicraft department was opened in the Gorodets Museum, where works of peasant craftsmen were collected. The world of peasant household life became the subject of serious study and deep understanding by contemporaries. From individual surviving items, scattered facts, from meetings and conversations with masters, a fairly complete and objective idea of ​​Gorosche and the Gorodets district as the original center of Russian peasant art was finally formed.
On the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod region, masters created completely different types of wood painting - Gorodets and Fedoseev, Polkhovmaidan and Khokhloma. Gorodets painting arose and flourished in close proximity to the “kingdom” of Khokhloma. But the golden shine of Khokhloma did not overshadow the bright festivity of the works of Gorodets masters. Khokhloma amazes with its golden shine, as if fantastic red-black inflorescences and herbs were born in fire, and with delicate calligraphy of the finest lines.
To understand why Gorodets painting became the way it did, you definitely need to visit its homeland.
Each period of Gorodets history is interesting in its own way. In the 13th century, Gorodets was the capital of the Gorodets Principality, and then became part of the Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal Grand Duchy. The early history of the Gorodets principality is associated with the names of Andrei Bogolyubsky, Mstislav the Udaly, Alexander Nevsky. Russian chronicles reflected not only the construction of the city and the successful raids of the princes against the Bulgars, but also terrible events - the attack on Gorodets by the hordes of Batu. But after five or six years, the surviving residents of Gorodets restored the city. Soon he became a prince younger brother Alexander Nevsky - Andrey. His clash with the Tatar khan Nevrei threatened a new invasion of the Tatars, which there was nothing to repel yet. The elder brother Alexander Yaroslavich had to go to the Horde with a bow and gifts. He returned already seriously ill and, barely reaching Gorodets in November 1263, died here in the Fedorovsky Monastery.

In the 16th century, a second name was assigned to Gorodets - Small Kitezh, in contrast to the legendary Big Kitezh, which hid from enemies in the waters of Lake Svetloyar, which is not so far from Gorodets.
Gradually losing its significance as a military outpost, Gorodets gained strength as a trade and craft center. It was famous for its tarantula makers, tanners and saddlers, embroiderers and gold seamstresses. In former times, the city was filled with the honey spirit of the Gorodets priests. which have been baked here since centuries. There were so many of them that there were enough for the nearby Balakhna and Nizhny Novgorod, and the distant Tver and Astrakhan. The following testimony has come down to us from centuries ago: “15 versts from Balakhna there was... the trading village of Gorodets, in which “notable auctions” took place every Saturday. The list of what was traded in Gorodets at that time takes several pages.
Gorodets, being a center of trade and shipbuilding in the 19th century, has always remained a bright, original center of national culture. The uniqueness of local cultural traditions was largely determined by the unique geographical location Gorodets. Since the 12th century, it has been an inseparable part of the Vladimir-Suzdal land with its highest traditions of architecture, icon painting, and decorative art.
If you try to trace the origins of Gorodets painting, you need to remember that Gorodets in the 17th-19th centuries was one of the centers of the Old Believers. Local icon painting originated from the icons brought here by settlers from the northern lands after the destruction of the Pomeranian and Solovetsky monasteries by the tsarist authorities.

Sometimes intuitively, but more often quite consciously, the masters of Gorodets painting sought to continue the traditions of the Nizhny Novgorod icon, especially its floral ornaments - “grass about letters”. It was this icon pattern making with its refined techniques of painting flowers and herbs, collecting them into garlands and bouquets that was an excellent school for every Gorodets master, and a familiar school, familiar from childhood. The icon taught the beauty of color, the expressiveness of silhouettes, the techniques of constructing space, and the significance of every detail. The originality of Gorodets painting was born at the junction of the traditions of the Old Believer forest Trans-Volga region, the famous Nizhny Novgorod fair, the influence of which was felt in the economy, life, and customs of the entire Volga region. »
A greedy receptivity to everything new attracted peasant artists to depict all these innovations, new people, festive festivities in the city, steamships on the Volga, fairground amusements.
The glory of Gorodets painting began with the decoration of women's household items. These are spinning wheels, weaving mills and cupboards, boxes and children's chairs. Uzol craftsmen especially loved to decorate spinning wheels.
The Gorodets spinning wheel seems by its nature intended for the work of an artist. The basis of the spinning wheel - the bottom - is a fairly wide board, the dimensions of which vary. If the length is almost always about 70 cm, then the width varies from 30 to 50 cm. A toe is attached to the front rounded part of such a board - a tetrahedral truncated pyramid with a hole in the upper part for inserting a rather large comb on a long handle. The comb was used to attach tow - flax or wool. The spinner, placing the bottom on the bench, sat on it and began to spin, winding the thread onto the spindle. And now, with the talent and skill of the Gorodets masters, the Donets have become works of high art, striking with their beauty more than one generation of connoisseurs.

According to local legend, the masters of the Uzol Valley received their first painting skills from the artist N.I. Ogurechnikov, who renovated the church paintings in the village of Kurtsevo in 1870. But local masters studied not only with painters.
Here we will have to get acquainted with Uzol wood carvers. They made spinning wheels, decorating them with carved patterns. At first, the carving was common for peasant utensils: geometric grids, rosettes with diverging rays - symbolic images of the sun, which are also called solar signs. And for several years, along with the traditional
carving appeared completely different - both in content and technique in the 19th century. execution. Not ancient magic signs, and modern life and its images have become the main ones.
On the Donets appeared scenes of horse hunts with dogs and falcons, riders on rearing horses with drawn sabers, luxurious carriages racing at full speed with footmen at the back and dashing coachmen on the handlebars. With amazing love and diligence, scenes of city festivities were depicted - sumptuously dressed ladies with the usual umbrellas in their hands, their gentlemen in frock coats with tightly pulled waists, in high buckwheat hats (a kind of cylinders) or cocked hats with plumes. Undoubtedly, when such carving products appeared on the market, they created a sensation. But not only with plots, but also with new carving techniques. Instead of the usual triangular-recessed carving, faster execution, less painstaking, but no less expressive contour and bracket carving was used. Using semicircular chisels of different widths and thin knives, the carver created paintings unprecedented in previous art.

While making inlaid carved bottoms, the craftsmen mastered various compositional techniques. Along with the vertical tiered composition, a horizontal one was also used, which provided sufficient space to place on the bottom a massive carriage with a lady sitting in it, a spear harnessed to the carriage, a coachman with a whip, and a footman at the back. And the first thing that attracts you about the bottoms with carriages is the unmistakable sense of scale, the ratio of image and background. Every detail is visible, significant, and extremely expressive. The carved donets already fully demonstrated the professionalism of the town residents in constructing a plot composition based on a clear organic rhythm. This rhythmicity will develop even more in painting.
Another important feature inherited by painters from carvers is extraordinary specificity and accuracy in the details of the image. The carver carves not a carriage at all, but a spring carriage
century, or depicts the old “Catherine’s” carriage, which can now be seen in museums.

In the geometric, narrative carvings of Gorodets, and later in the painting, another important feature of folk art appeared - the combination of reality and fantasy in one composition. The spinners at work and the scene of presenting a wedding gift to the bride are juxtaposed with figures of fantastic horsemen, with unprecedented plants resembling palm trees.
So, having carefully looked at the Gorodets carvings with inlay and later carvings with tinting, it is not difficult to see that the carvers were the painters’ immediate teachers. It was they who determined the main theme of the future painting, identified its main characters, and laid the foundation for the visual language of Gorodets art. In a word, on the basis of old art, something completely new was born - peasant painting, which absorbed the beauty of the surrounding nature, everyday life - not only the material, but also the spiritual value of the things associated with it, the marvelous patterns of ancient books, icons, and handicrafts.
In the foreground were, of course, distaff bottoms, starting from modest, narrow ones, decorated with one flower, a branch with berries, a bird or a skate - in a word, an ordinary market product, to wide, monumental ones, where the artist, showing all his art, painted in three whole tiers. There were scenes of crowded festivities and feasts, images of military battles, seeing off soldiers, dashing officers on horseback and important ladies having a decorous conversation. The painting was often carried out on a special order as a gift to the bride from the mother or groom. The ritual purpose of such donets is confirmed not only by the richness of the painting and special subjects, but also by the inscriptions on the spinning wheels or the stories of local old-timers.

The shapes of local spinning wheels were worked out almost perfectly by Gorodets carvers of the first half of the 19th century. They learned to cut out the bottom itself from aspen and attach a head to it for inserting a comb - hoes, decorate the edges of the bottom with smooth semicircular cuts, make it the height of grace, decorating two side faces inlaid with a bird and a horse, the other two - with thin longitudinal cuts, reminiscent of the flutes of antique columns. However, the painters needed smooth surfaces to work with, and the edges of the bottom and the edges of the cap become smooth over time.
But having become less expressive in form, the bottoms of the second half of the 19th century flourished. like a fairy garden.
The Gorodets painter manages to paint a bright bird among flowers, a black pipit, on a very small plane. And when it comes to decorating the wide surface of the bottom, there are no limits to his imagination! People in then fashionable costumes, animals and birds, fantastic flowers, rooms - almost palace halls and streets with their motley crowd. But no matter how fantastic the master’s plans may be, a certain order, custom, canon always reigns in his painting. And according to this custom, he divides the oblong surface of the bottom into three tiers. The upper one, near the cap, is usually slightly larger than the lower one; The two parts are separated by an ornamental frieze. It can consist of multi-colored stripes, or it can become a lush garland of flowers or a branch with berries. It depends only on the taste of the artist whether to paint the entire bottom on one background or make the background different for the upper and lower parts of the composition. Often there are bottoms written on the favorite single golden-yellow background, and it also happens that the top stamp is orange, and the bottom one is bright crimson.
The stamps differed not only in background color, but also in their subjects. In the upper part of the bottom, the master more often turned to the world of people, while in the lower part there was the kingdom of nature - images of animals or plants. But this is only the general scheme for constructing the painting of the classical Donets, and the masters did not always follow it unquestioningly. The unique charm of Gorodets painting lies precisely in the constant deviation from the canon, in the feeling of creative freedom of each master.
Next to the elegant painted spinning wheel there was usually a painted mochesnik - a box for spindles and “lobes”. (“Lobe” is a tow of flax prepared for yarn.) To make mochesniks in the spring, preferably in damp, windy weather, linden bast was prepared, cut into strips of the required size, steamed, bent, and then sewn in a special way - “lock” , using thin and strong pine root. This sewn strip of bast formed the basis of an oblong oval box, to which a smooth wooden bottom was subsequently attached. - and the urine bag was ready.

The rounded shape of urchins, bast boxes or baskets made it possible to expand the image into a kind of frieze ribbon, to tell a whole story, as if extended in time. It could be a picturesque story about a hunt, a wedding, get-togethers, or the busy traffic of steamships on the Volga. The frieze could be continuous, or it could consist of several episodes or, as the old icon painters said, stamps.
The most common order for decorating the mochssnik was: two plot scenes - along the longitudinal sides
boxes, two ornamental motifs on the ends. One scene was separated from the other by a vertical strip of a characteristic Gorodets ornament - a rope, bindweed, crossed brackets.
It would seem that on a small space on the wall of the mochesnik it would have been much more convenient to paint a rose, a garland of flowers or another ornamental motif, but here too the Uzolsky artist argued that without depicting scenes of modern life there is no Gorodets painting. How amazingly he used the expressiveness of the poses and gestures of his characters, but truly built almost theatrical mise-en-scenes as a director. There is a lot to learn here as a colorist. In the painting of the urchin “Spinners” from the collection of the Gorodets Historical and Artistic Museum Complex, the author uses an extremely beautiful coloristic solution. On a blue background, he paints a scene of village gatherings and a scene of a meeting between young people, using orange-pink, green, black and white colors.
The images on the end sides of the urine bags often had deep meaning. This is, for example, a favorite motif in Gorodets painting - the image of a clock in a rich ornamental frame. The figure of an elderly woman, the mother of the bride or groom, at the other end of the urinal, seems to remind us of the inexorable passage of time. These images are another confirmation that mochesniks, like spinning wheels, were not just everyday peasant things, but were associated with village rituals and holidays, the most important of which was weddings.

Kryukov's workshop. Mochesnik. The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century. SPGIKHMZ

No matter how good the urchins and baskets are, it is difficult for them to compete in beauty and originality with the painted chairs - nurses and gurneys (the so-called chairs with wheels attached to them).
Depending on the size, Gorodets chairs were intended for both the children themselves and their dolls. This is a special area of ​​creativity of Gorodets artists - work on decorating an object of complex three-dimensional shape. Turned gurneys - children's chairs on wheels - were made in the villages of Repino and Koskovo, and bent chairs were made by peasants in Nikulin and Skolzikhin. For one gurney, more than three dozen parts were turned from aspen or birch. Using wooden axles and tenons, without nails or glue, these parts were connected so firmly that even today they remain intact and unharmed.
However, such chairs and wheelchairs became truly Gorodetsky only when they were painted on a crimson, brown, yellow, blue or black background. First, the seat was painted - a small plane measuring approximately 20x20 cm, sometimes in the shape of a trapezoid. This part of the work was considered the most difficult and responsible. The most common motif here is a branch with berries and small leaves, written diagonally across the plane. A special role was played by the whitening strokes - karazzhivka, thanks to which the branch came to life, acquired graphic clarity, but did not lose its picturesqueness. The master's love for the freedom and virtuosity of the whitewash stroke was especially evident in the framing of the seat of the chair and the composition on its back - the visor.
The artist had at his disposal only a narrow frame, about 2.5 cm wide, and a small back plate - no more than 20x8 cm. The master ran a light stroke around the square in the center
which has already been written a branch, a flower, a cat, a boy riding a dog or another funny plot. The frame could be white brackets, brackets with a stroke in the middle of each hole, an intricate rope or just a white outline.

Birds and animals often appear on Gorodets chairs. Masters often painted lying, curled up cats, but they especially loved those sitting proudly, surrounded by flowers and berries. Black, gray and bright red cats appear not only on chairs, but also on urchins and baskets.
It would seem absurd - a portrait on the seat of a toy chair! But you can’t escape the fact of the existence of such works. This is how images of ladies in elegant dresses, with bows on their shoulders, carrying buckets of water on rockers appear on the chairs and on the distaff bottoms, or the image of a decorous couple walking, where the gentleman was certainly “at the clock”, the signature under which could be a local ditty of the beginning XX century:
I asked: “What time is it?”
He said: "Ninth hour."
I asked: “Who do you love?”
He said: “Of course, you!”
There are many such analogies with ditties, but if a ditty is always mischievous and fleeting, then the Gorodets ceremonial portrait, although comical, is majestic in its own way. The influence of a provincial merchant portrait is palpable in it. The works of the first Nizhny Novgorod and Gorodets photographers undoubtedly had their influence on this genre.
The Gorodets portrait has a canon, a unique standard composition. The master also indicated part of the furnishings of the house, drawing a high arched window with an intricate frame. Much attention was paid to other interior details - a table with carved patterned legs, a large flowerpot with flowers, and sometimes a part of a patterned floor, cut into squares of parquet, was depicted.

In books written about Gorodets painting, it was often said that its style is undoubtedly associated with the folk popular print. But with what kind of popular print? The heyday of Russian popular prints—hand-painted wooden and copper favures—came at the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, this art began to decline and was replaced by the so-called popular prints. Printing houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg printed oleographs and very poor artistic quality “simples” - lithographs hand-colored by urban artisans who had recently come from peasant backgrounds. They depicted modern events, famous people, for example. the then well-known General Skobelev, fairy tales, scenes of village life, feasts of merchants in rich restaurants. These pictures were so artistically insignificant that none of the art critics even wanted to understand them. But, as it turned out, the Gorodets masters looked at them “with all their eyes” and did not look at all in vain: they needed to learn to paint scenes of today’s life, the buyer demanded from them topical plots, scenes of the life of townspeople and the Volga merchants, knowledge of the furnishings of houses and modern rather complex women's and men's costume. The late popular print turned out to be an excellent auxiliary material, a kind of cheat sheet. And the talent of the Gorodets craftsmen was to be able to use this working material as nothing more than a hint. They picked up technical techniques, principles for solving space, and interesting details from urban artisans and reinterpreted them as true artists who masterfully wielded the brush.

It is difficult for a modern person to believe the memories of old masters that they worked by the light of a kerosene lamp for 14-16 hours every day, creating works of such beauty, freshness and artistry that it would never even occur to them to talk about some kind of forced labor. It was indeed a lot of work, but passionate, creative work, full of desire to express one’s artistic essence.
Bright, talented artists created paintings. Sidor Konovalov was not like the brothers A.V. and L.V. Melnikovs. I.A Mazin painted flowers and herbs in a completely different way. The second half of the 19th century in the Uzol Valley was marked by such a bright and varied flowering of Gorodets painting that literally each of the masters deserves a detailed story about their work.
If the earliest masters, S. Konovalov and the Melnikov brothers, were characterized by painting a pre-applied drawing, then the second, later stage in the development of painting was truly picturesque. This second, picturesque, stage is largely determined by the works of I.A. Mazin and F.S. Krasnoyarov. I.A. Mazin, a student of S. Konovalov, was, of course, one of the most talented Gorodets masters. His techniques for constructing plot and ornamental compositions are extremely diverse. He can write a simple everyday scene, like the one called “Seryozha the Shepherd,” depicting a meeting of a rural couple under a tree, or he can build a complex multi-figure composition, which the master himself entitled “A Gift to the Daughter-in-Law from the Mother-in-Law.”

The subjects he chose also corresponded to Krasnoyarov’s creative temperament. He most often depicted racing troikas, horsemen, and military men. His works often feature images of soldiers and officers from the Balkan War, dressed in blue and red uniforms, which the master always painted with great attention to the smallest details.
The sales market for Gorodets products was undermined, and long-term traditional ties between producers and consumers of handicraft products were broken. Even the previously beloved painted Gorodets toy was no longer bought either in Gorodets or in Nizhny Novgorod. It seemed that all sources of livelihood had dried up.
At the same time, the 1920s were marked by growing interest among various segments of the Russian public in folk art and in the activities of artisans. There were many reasons for this: the artisans, according to the ideas of the new government, were supposed to replenish the commodity market that was empty as a result of the ruin of industry with their products. Original handicraft products: unique Russian lace, carved and painted wood, embroidery - made it possible to enter foreign markets and promised foreign exchange earnings to the impoverished treasury.
The ideological side of the task of reviving crafts also seemed important - to promote the development of art in a new social environment, in a new city and new village. Plans for the cooperation of artisans and the creation of artels were widely advertised from the highest stands, at various congresses and conferences; the ideas of industrial cooperation were “introduced locally” in various regions of Russia. Representatives of the old Russian intelligentsia, who understood the need to preserve the centuries-old cultural heritage of the country, also joined in the propaganda of folk art.
Only in 1935 was an attempt made to unite Gorodets painting masters. Their vast experience, knowledge, and various artistic talents were absolutely necessary for the revival of the craft. However, the ability of old masters to work only with traditional products was also a significant obstacle in mastering a new range of decorative and utilitarian items.

To help the town residents switch to painting new types of products, the artist I.I. came to Gorodets from Sershev Posad in the mid-1930s. Oveshkov is a great connoisseur of folk art.
He made a lot of efforts to record the special techniques of each master. Since the industry in those years experienced great difficulties with wood, Oveshkov suggested that the craftsmen perform some of the compositions on paper glued with wood glue.
Based on this basis, the craftsmen painted in the traditional Gorodets style with paints diluted with wood glue. For comparatively short term Oveshkov collected quite a large number of unique compositions by Gorodets masters of the older generation. Among these sheets were the most interesting “trips” and “tea parties with the household” by F.S. Krasnoyarov, original compositions on the themes of the old and new life of Gorodets by I.A. Mazin, works by P.D. Kolesova, I.K. Lebedev and others. The fate of most of these sheets was unknown for a long time. An idea of ​​them could only be obtained from copies made in the mid-1940s by artist T.A. Mavrina. In 1997, the original drawings were discovered in the funds of the Nizhny Novgorod State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve. Highly appreciating the originality of I.A.’s creative style. Mazina. Gorodets toys are made flat with front side and voluminous at the back, which gives them stability and allows them to be moved. Mazinskaya small plastic sculpture - a kind of painted sculpture - seems to be one of the most successful experiments in using Gorodets painting in its new quality.

In the Kurtsev workshop of the 1930s, craftsmen also worked on turning painted dishes and small pieces of furniture (shelves, hangers). However, many masters wanted to paint large planes and build multi-figure compositions. After all, this is exactly what their previous many years of work have taught them to do. But the Donets were completely a thing of the past; it was necessary to look for a new application for my skill. This is how a rather significant and varied series of painted panels appeared. They were written by almost all famous Gorodets masters, choosing a wide variety of themes. There was field work, rural weddings, “excellent border guards,” and views of old Gorodetskaya Street. These works are entertaining, bright in color, and sometimes very decorative throughout the composition. The authors try very hard to be modern, introducing details of a new way of life, depicting modern people. I.A. Mazin is no longer constrained by the size of the bottom, its shape, or the Gorodets canon - a vertical two-tier composition. Not for everyday use, but for exhibition, the master paints his panel “Into the Haymaking”, using the shape of a spinning wheel bottom. The fact that in the hands of the master is now not a spinning wheel, but a kind of painting, allows him to operate with space more freely, making it deeper, introducing more elements of the landscape, which was not typical of traditional Gorodets painting.
The appearance of the characters also becomes different: their hairstyles change, their dresses become shorter. It is quite appropriate now to depict village boys in T-shirts and T-shirts of sportsmen.
New times have brought a lot of previously unseen things into the surrounding life and changed the very social status of folk craftsmen. After the seemingly complete decline of the fishery, in the 1930s there was hope for a better future. City residents are beginning to prepare for the grandiose exhibition “Folk Art” in Moscow. Recognition of the significance of their work could not but inspire these no longer young people, and again, as in their own best years, begin to praise the joy of life. Strange as it may sound today, when we know the sad fates of many Gorodets residents, and even the masters themselves, but even then, in the cruel thirties, they sincerely believed in goodness, they remained the same “enchanted wanderers”, born to see there is only beauty around. Unlike the “scientific” artists of that time, who consciously fulfilled the social order, they did not dissemble at all in their views on the life of that time, maintaining the major, joyful sound of painting.

At pre-war exhibitions of folk art, the works of Gorodets artists were exhibited more than once with great success, but, as a rule, the matter was limited to these exhibitions. The old masters failed to attract young people to their work. Of the next generation, only A.E. sought to work creatively. Konovalov and K.I. Lebedev, son of I.K. Lebedeva. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War Gorodets craftsmen were forced to paint dishes “like Khokhloma” and decorate children’s railway stations with paintings.
The situation in the Gorodets industry became even more complicated during the Great Patriotic War and the first post-war years. The war claimed the lives of many Gorodets craftsmen, their children and relatives, to whom the taste for art could have been inherited. The production of painted items has practically ceased. The first steps to revive production were taken in the 1950s.
Since the 1960s, the craft has lived the life of Soviet artistic and industrial production with all its attributes: workshops, plans, financial indicators, concerns about raw materials and sales of products. It was undoubtedly something completely different from the small family workshops in the Uzola valley. Another indispensable condition for the existence of this traditional painting for one and a half hundred years is the sincere love for it of the masters themselves, and of many Nizhny Novgorod residents, and of all Russians who sometimes live far from the homeland of the craft.

Each of the famous Gorodets artists has their own preferences in traditional art. It is unlikely that II.A would have decided. Stolesnikov to paint the panel “Battle of Borodino” if there were no old Gorodets “battle painter” G.L. Polyakova. There is a lot of true Gorodets humor and at the same time sedateness in the works of L.A. Kubatkina, V.A. Chertkova. In the works of A.V. Sokolova’s remarkable ability is to build a multi-figure composition, solve interior space, and write characters in true Gorodets style.
Artists of the post-war generation, the first students of A.E. Konovalov, did a tremendous creative job, mastering all the richness of the Gorodets floral ornament, reviving the Gorodets plot, and proving that it is possible to reveal bright creative individuals even in production conditions. They did a lot to continue the best traditions of the craft, to educate young Gorodets painters, to expand their creative horizons.
The love for Gorodets painted products and their widespread use in rural and urban life in Russia in the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries is explained not only by their aesthetic qualities, but also by their excellent, highly professional technical performance. Gorodets painting has always been distinguished by strength and durability.
Today we can judge the strength of the paint layer of Gorodets painting and the refinement of its classical technical techniques by the fairly good preservation of the products in museums and private collections: the brightness of the colors has not faded, and in many cases the varnish coating remains intact. This is convincing evidence that for the Gorodets master both the artistic and purely craft side of his work were equally important.
The technical side of Gorodets painting includes several production cycles. Both in the old industry and in modern production it all started with a pound of wooden products. Its goal was to create such an even and moderately smooth surface that would hold paints well, would not allow them to spread, would make it possible to work quickly enough, and most importantly, would preserve the beauty of a broad painterly brushstroke and the grace of graphic shading.

The most important part of Gorodets painting skill was a good knowledge of the properties of paints and the ability to prepare them. It’s unlikely that a century and a half later we would have been able to admire Gorodets painting if the craftsmen had not mastered the techniques of fixing the paint layer using varnish.
The technology of Gorodets writing has undergone various changes throughout its history. The earliest, according to researchers, should be considered a variant of the technology borrowed from local icon painters: the technique of painting with egg tempera on gesso, a traditional icon-painting ground made from chalk on an adhesive base.
We should not forget that the Gorodets painting craft was not a single production - a manufactory or a factory, but a number of separate family workshops. Each had its own character of production, assortment of products and, naturally, with its own variants of painting technology. The difference between these options depended not only on the place of production of a particular product, but also on the time when it was created.
IN last decades Another version of working on Gorodets plots spread, adopted in school circles and amateur studios. This is the use of tempera or gouache both for sketches on paper and for decorating wooden products. This method can be used to master painting techniques at home, in an art group or studio.
The author was lucky enough to learn the most accurate information about the traditional technology of Gorodets painting from A.E. Konovalov, a master who, as it were, embodied live connection between the past and present of a wonderful fishery. Answering my questions, A.E. Konovalov argued that the traditional classical technique of Gorodets writing was painting with glue paints. The paints were “in powders,” that is, in modern terms, in the form of dry pigments. In preparation for work, the paints were carefully ground with a chime; sometimes several paints were mixed during rubbing, achieving a richness of color shades.

Ancient Gorodets painting is always painting “on colored backgrounds” (the appearance in the 1940-1950s of the so-called texture painting, that is, on unpainted wood, is associated not with artistic tradition, but with economic difficulties in the industry). The work of the old masters on painting a product began with the choice of background color and priming of the wood surface. To prime and paint the background, for example, in his favorite color yellow, the artist mixed yellow crown with ground chalk, and then diluted the paints with wood glue, pouring them into clay bowls. As a rule, several products were pounded at once: the primer was applied in one layer and dried fairly quickly. After drying, the surface was cleaned of wood “lint” and once again covered with a layer of transparent wood glue. After the second drying, the product was ready for painting.
Paints intended for painting, previously thoroughly ground and mixed, were also diluted with glue, diluted to the consistency of sour cream and stirred with special wooden sticks. If the paint was too thick, it was heated on the stove or a little glue was added.
The first stage of painting - shading (underpainting) is to designate the main color spots. Large or medium brushes, kolinsky or squirrel, were used for it. Usually these are factory-made brushes, but it happens that they also use their own knitted brushes.
When starting to paint a floral or plot motif, the master did this, as a rule, without any preliminary drawing, at the same time clearly representing the features of his future pattern, the nature of the ornament or genre scene.
Having finished the underpainting, the master proceeded to the second stage. Gorodets masters called it shading. With this technique, the artist gave volume to the main color spots. Minium in combination with cormorant, blue with ultramarine, pink with specks made the shapes of flowers more expressive and decorative.
Then came the third stage - razzhikka (revival). Here the craftsmen needed thin brushes, since they had to apply whitening strokes, thin black lines, and rows of small strokes and dots. They were called “grains”, “pearls”. Livening is an amazingly beautiful and expressive technique that gives each form a special completeness and harmony.
At the end of painting, the products were covered with a thin layer of boiled linseed oil, which served as a varnish that fixed the painting.

Technologists, artists, art historians from the Moscow Scientific Research Institute of the Art Industry (NIIHP) and artists from the Gorodets Painting factory in the 1960s carried out extensive experimental work to restore the traditional technology of Gorodets writing in modern conditions.
We will give part practical information, useful for an artist who wants to get closer to traditional technology.
The surface of the product was sanded with sandpaper, then wood glue boiled until completely dissolved was applied to it (at the rate of 20 g of glue per 180 ml of water). Then the product was glued a second time and dried again.
The next stage of surface preparation was priming, immediately before which the product had to be sanded again.
To preserve the matte surface of the painting, after drying it was coated with nitrocellulose varnish NTs-243.
The goal of this experiment was largely achieved - in production conditions it was possible to recreate a technology quite close to the traditional one. It seems that, if desired, it can also be used by artists who revere Gorodets classical technology. But in the context of an art group or studio, or independent painting classes, it can be quite difficult to use the ancient Gorodets painting technology or a variant close to it.
Experience has shown that painting can be done using ready-made tempera or gouache. Were tested quite successfully and more simple ways primers for wooden products. Some artists glue the surface of the wood with PVA glue diluted with water, others successfully use other priming methods. One of them is as follows.
A thin layer of liquid starch paste is applied to the surface of the carpentry or turning product with a hard brush, swab or simply with the palm of your hand. In this case, you must try to apply the glue as evenly as possible, without leaving pieces of film or grains on the surface. After the paste has dried, you should lightly walk over the surface of the product with sandpaper, removing any unevenness. After the adhesive primer, the background is painted with gouache or tempera. In this case, you can use two ways to create a colored background: the first is to cover the surface of the wood with a thick layer of paint; the second is to only lightly tint the surface of the wood with liquid paint, without covering the wood texture.
Paints for painting must be prepared very carefully. For each color, you should prepare a small cup or use commercially available small watercolor “palettes” with small wells for different colors of paint and a large container for mixing the paints. For a small amount of work, gouache of each color should be ground with water and stirred with a wooden or plastic spatula until it reaches the consistency of liquid sour cream without lumps or grains.

Mochesnik. The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century. NGILMZ. Museum of Historical and Artistic Crafts of the Nizhny Novgorod Region.

When preparing for work, you should foresee in advance what color paints will be needed for painting, shading, and shading.
Next to the dark green color - chromium oxide - you should place a lighter green color, make up pink color- for example, kraplak diluted with white, etc.
The artist’s workplace should also have a container of water for diluting paints and washing brushes, and a stand for brushes different sizes. You can make such stands, which are small triangular bars with a number of shallow grooves for brushes, yourself, but you can also use those sold in stores and usually made of ceramic. A certain order in the workplace allows you not to scatter attention, not to be distracted from the main artistic task.
It was already discussed earlier that experienced Gorodets craftsmen work for the most part without preliminary drawings. This is especially true for traditional compositions, which masters know, as they say, by heart. It was about these people that Leskovsky Lefty said that they “have a fixed eye.” However, it would be wrong to construct a work without a preliminary drawing as a principle.
I have seen quite a few works from the early 20th century where traces of preliminary pencil markings were visible. Fragments of preliminary drawings are often visible in many new works by masters of the 1920s and 1930s.
Preliminary drawings only outlined the main features of the composition and seemed to give the artist more confidence. However, they were never followed literally when painting. As a rule, drawing was necessary for mastering new themes and new forms. Modern artists of Gorodets, knowing how and loving to work directly with wood, sometimes use not only preparatory drawings, but also color sketches done in watercolor or gouache on paper to develop new subjects. It seems that at the initial stage of work, a preliminary sketch on paper or a thin pencil outline of the main figures, floral forms, and interior details applied directly to the wood will not hurt a novice painter.

The first works of an artist mastering the basics of Gorodets painting are flat carpentry products, for example, small cutting boards. Having primed such a board with starch paste, as described above, dried it and lightly sanded it, paint the color that best matches the design is applied to the surface. This background can be yellow or orange, light brown or dark red. Here I would like to warn the novice master against typical mistake- haste. No matter how quickly gouache or tempera dries, you must allow the background to dry as best as possible. Set aside the painted boards for a few hours, and then you will have a guarantee that the next stage of work - painting - will be successful. In the same way, it is necessary to dry each layer of painting well.
It should be noted that Gorodets painting is beautiful and expressive at all its stages. It is not for nothing that viewers, finding themselves at an exhibition next to a working master, are delighted, looking at the still far from finished composition, and even ask the artist to stop at the shading stage. The artist perfectly understands the charm of an unfinished work, but also understands that it is impossible to stop at this stage, since Gorodets painting without lovely light whitewash does not have the artistic completeness for which connoisseurs value it so much. Livening is done with whitewash and black soot paint, the work with which requires special care and caution, subtlety and a sense of proportion. Therefore, as already mentioned, the thinnest brushes are chosen, allowing the master to draw graceful lines, perform curved strokes with pressure or light shading.

Often it is by the practice that you recognize the hand of a particular master: it reveals not only skill, but also artistic temperament, manner of work, even the emotional mood of the master.
White and black thin lines, emphasizing the contours of human figures, images of animals, fragments of flower forms, give the composition a special grace. A picturesque spot and a graphic stroke not only coexist in Gorodets painting on equal terms, but also perfectly complement each other and create a complete decorative picture. A.E. Konovalov especially emphasized the importance of revivals in Gorodets painting.
After completing all stages of painting from painting to shading, you should again give the work sufficient time to dry, and only after making sure that the paint has dried well, fix the painting with varnish.
Particular attention should be paid to the fragments of painting done with whitewash.
These are whitening dots - “pearls”, stamens of flowers, shading of various patterns. Sometimes when painting, details painted with white lead to a dense, “pasty” appearance. When painting characters' faces and hands with white, it is necessary to apply several layers of white. If you do not allow these fragments of painting to dry completely, then when you cover them with a rather liquid varnish, you can damage them. Correcting these errors is very difficult, almost impossible.
The final operation - coating the finished composition with varnish - is very important. The most successful and organic for this type of painting is a varnish coating that does not give a bright shine, preserves colorful combinations, and does not introduce unnecessary yellowness into the white color. The old masters covered their paintings with a layer of drying oil - well-cooked linseed oil. Pure transparent drying oil retained the color of the paints and was so strong that it did not require multiple coatings, which, in turn, made it possible to preserve the special velvety quality of the painting surface. But the coating with drying oil went away along with the classical period of Gorodets painting.
When working with oil paints, which was practiced in the industry for quite a long time (from approximately the second half of the 1930s to the end of the 1970s), the painting was covered with colorless oil-resin varnishes of industrial production, as well as pentaphthalic varnishes PF-283/4C and PF 231. In production conditions, varnishing was carried out in one step using the pneumatic spraying method.

In a workshop, art studio or circle, amateur artists can also use these varnishes. They allow you to preserve the expressiveness of color when painting with tempera or gouache. Methods of applying varnish may vary. You can use a household spray bottle, or you can use a brush. With both methods of coating, the varnish must be quite liquid, and a certain amount of experience is needed to achieve an even and smooth coating, avoiding runs and unevenness of the varnish.
Repeated coating with varnish is undesirable, since even colorless varnishes, when applied in a thick layer, affect the color of the paints, making the painting darker, less bright and decorative.
In conclusion, it must be emphasized that these general rules of Gorodets technology have their own variants. Each of the painting masters has many of his own devices, creative techniques, and habits, which determine the uniqueness of the artist’s signature style. Therefore, knowing the basics of traditional Gorodets technology, its variants that arose during the development of the craft, each of those who want to join this art is free to choose those technological techniques that best suit his creative individuality.
Currently, Gorodets painting is of such great public interest, there is so much desire of both experienced and just beginning artists to comprehend its secrets, that more and more people are striving to learn the details of the history, technology, techniques and means of artistic expression of this art, the features of the work of its most outstanding masters.

Many clubs and studios will be created, there are many schools and even kindergartens where they teach the basics of painting. This speaks of creative aspirations, of the kinship of modern people with the artistic culture of distant ancestors, but there is also a hidden danger here in simplifying painting and eroding its true deep traditions. There are many different manuals published in which the authors try to teach their readers some knowledge about folk painting, in particular Gorodets. Unfortunately, the main drawback of these manuals is amateurism, an attempt to pass on experience “through third hands,” and the lack of direct creative contacts with the most experienced Gorodets masters.
Nowadays, many celebrities - musicians, singers, dramatic artists - open their own schools in different cities of the world, conduct creative seminars, calling them “master classes”. It is not a shame for Gorodets virtuosos to directly, directly address lovers of Gorodets painting with a demonstration of their vast and varied creative experience.
On the pages of this book is your “ Master Class» is conducted by a wonderful Gorodets master, laureate of the State Prize of Russia named after I.E. Repina Alexandra Vasilievna Sokolova. She went through the school of old Gorodets masters and worked next to A.E. for many years. Konovalov, and today he heads a large creative team. But above all, she is a wonderful, unique artist, with a keen sense of all the features of Gorodets painting, the traditional sequence of elements: from simple to the most complex. She inherited from her predecessors a sense of decorative composition, knows the intricacies of working with wooden products of various shapes, and the peculiarities of working with different types paints and varnishes. The experience of such a master is invaluable for new generations of artists.
It is difficult to describe the techniques of this type of folk brush painting with the word “technical”: they are so all connected not with technology in its usual sense, but with a skillful human hand, its ability to move smoothly and flexibly, rhythmically and assertively, and most importantly, deeply meaningfully and at the same time It's emotional time.
It is with the transfer of the unique Gorodets experience of using a brush that A.V. will begin his “master class”. Sokolov, leading us step by step from the simplest to the most complex in the Gorodets art of painting.

Old Gorodets masters. From left to right Ignatiy Andreevich Mazin, Fedor Semenovich Krasnoyarov, Ignatiy Klementevich Lebedev

The Nizhny Novgorod region is rich in folk crafts. One of these famous crafts is Gorodets painting, which originated in the 19th century in a city located on the Volga with the consonant name Gorodets. Gorodets painting is distinguished by the brightness of its colors, the clear design of the figures and ornaments, and the fine work of the artist, expressed in the strong detail of the drawing. It is also characterized by a contrasting outline in black or white. Products in the style of Gorodets painting are deservedly popular among lovers of folk crafts.

History of Gorodets painting

Crafts related to the creation and decoration of wood products have always become traditional for forest-rich regions of Russia. The Nizhny Novgorod region and the banks of the Volga were no exception. Painting originated from the use of contrasting types of wood with which spinning wheels were inlaid. Later, paints began to be added to this wooden drawing. Gradually, inlay became a thing of the past, giving way to pure painting. Before the revolution, Gorodets painting decorated household items - spinning wheels, supplies, children's toys and furniture, cutting boards, and was an item of trade for residents mainly of the Nizhny Novgorod region itself. However, initially, paintings were mainly used to decorate spinning wheels, which were a desirable product at fairs outside the region. When the painted spinning wheel was not in use, the owner hung the painted bottom on the wall as a painting. At the beginning of the 20th century and during the revolution, Gorodets painting, like many other folk crafts, fell into decline. And, like many other crafts, for example, it was revived centrally, but with the help and high dedication of masters who carried the tradition, who preserved the secrets of craftsmanship within their families. Thus, in 1936, an artel was organized in Gorodets for the continuous production of products with Gorodets painting. Gradually, the range of Gorodets painting products was revived, in the 60s. In the 20th century, the production of children's furniture with Gorodets motifs began.

Products with Gorodets painting

Gorodets painting is easily recognizable. Peasant and urban life and genre scenes became the motives for painting chests, caskets, and spinning wheels. This painting is characterized by popular print and deliberateness. In Gorodets they painted plant motifs - flowers and leaf-shaped patterns - in a more sweeping manner.

In addition to everyday scenes and plant motifs in Gorodets painting, like paintings in other regions, the leopard or lion became one of the favorite characters. You also often come across ones that are more familiar to residents middle zone horses and cockerels. At the same time, the horses in the Gorodets version are as slender and thin-legged as the northern ones in the Mezen painting.

Most often, if the area of ​​the item being painted allows, you can see both a genre composition and an ornamental floral frame on one item. Masters of Gorodets painting practically do not use preliminary drawings and immediately apply paint.

Behind the samovar, couples, ladies and gentlemen, smart and rosy-cheeked people, small cheerful dogs - such simple and cute scenes of city and village life are familiar to Gorodets souvenirs.

Gorodets painting has not lost its relevance in the 21st century. Bright subjects still look good in the interior. A new wave of application of painting - architectural and furniture decor, especially in country houses. Buy yourself a piece of beauty too. A couple of Gorodets boards or a sugar bowl on the table are enough to make the kitchen bright.

Gorodets painting, which you can buy on our website, will delight you with its richness and at the same time accuracy. In our online store you can find both purely practical things, for example, cutting boards, sugar bowls, candy dishes and salt shakers, and items for the soul, for example, richly decorated boxes, nesting dolls or panels. And, of course, a plate or box with Gorodets painting will be a memorable gift for foreign guests and partners.

Gorodets painting

(Gorodets)

The name “Gorodets” began to appear only in the 1930s after the appearance of the works of one of the most famous researchers of folk culture V.M. Vasilenko. In earlier periods we are talking about “Nizhny Novgorod painting” or “Kurtsev dyers”. The new name stuck because Gorodets was the main market for Uzol painted utensils and also had wood painting workshops. But the most important thing: the very content of the painting is connected with Gorodets, its way of life, Narva, and images, starting from the mid-19th century. The famous Uzol painting grew out of the entire artistic culture of Gorodets and its environs, the history of which goes back more than eight centuries.

Emergence Gorodets painting associated with the production of wooden spinning wheels in villages located near Gorodets. The production of Donets contributed to the emergence of an original local pictorial style.

The bottom of the spinning wheel. Gorodets painting.

The city of Gorodets is located on the left bank of the Volga River, not far from Nizhny Novgorod. Near Novgorod there was the largest Makaryevskaya fair in Russia, then the Nizhny Novgorod fair, where people from all over Russia and other countries came to trade, which contributed to the development of crafts. In Gorodets there were gingerbread makers, dyers, blacksmiths, carpenters and woodcarvers. The products were sold in the city or at the fair. Nizhny Novgorod spinning wheels had such a design that the main decoration was on the bottom (the board on which the spinner sits), since the comb from which the tow was spun was not intended for plot compositions, unlike the blade of Severodvinsk spinning wheels.

The spinning wheel consists of a comb, a bottom and a spindle.

Later they began to paint not only spinning wheels, but also all kinds of objects from peasant life - baskets, salt shakers, wooden toys, boxes for storing yarn and many other products. The colors of Gorodets painting were always bright and rich, all products were always decorated with lush bouquets of flowers reminiscent of roses and daisies. As the craft developed (by the end of the 19th century, residents of a dozen villages were involved in it), the painting design was also supplemented with new subjects. Characters from folk tales, scenes from city life, all kinds of “tea parties” and festivities appeared.”

Gorodets painting. Gatherings

Gorodets painting. Panel "Game of Towns".

Gorodets painting. Red Cavalry

Gorodets painting. “Daria bought goods from Makariy”

You will never confuse with anything the joyful colors of Gorodets painting, its black horses with a hooked leg and swan neck, its birds with outlandish tails in the shape of a butterfly wing. Horses are always depicted in profile, and people are always depicted from the front. And all this is surrounded by luxurious flower garlands.

Gorodets painting is symbolic. Horse it contains a symbol of wealth, bird- a symbol of happiness, and flowers- health and prosperity in business. The subjects of ancient Gorodets painting were riders on horses, young ladies in crinolines, weddings, feasts, tea parties and other solemn scenes from the life of the townspeople. But from the fact that all this was depicted by peasant artists, an extremely unique style of painting was created, in which the pomp and pretentiousness of urban elements are naively mixed with the innocence and sincerity characteristic of the common people.

In the old days, Gorodets products were decorated by craftsmen using a special inlay technique. Figures carved from a different type of wood (for example, bog oak) were inserted into the recesses. Such elements stood out in relief on the surface, and just two shades of wood in the hands of Gorodets craftsmen created real works of art based on an ordinary board. Later, craftsmen began to use tint (bright blue, green, red and yellow colors), which made the product even more colorful.

In the second half of the 19th century, inlay as a complex and labor-intensive technique was replaced by ordinary carving with painting, and already at the end of the century, pictorial elements became the predominant decor of Gorodets painting.

Technique of Gorodets painting

The technology of Gorodets painting is in many ways simpler than Khokhloma, especially in terms of preparing the base. Gorodets painting is done directly on a wooden base, which, if desired, can be covered with primer paint of red, black or yellow color. All main colors used in painting should have rich and diluted shades. On the working surface, use thin pencil lines to outline the composition of the future pattern. The main task is to outline the sizes and positions of the main elements, or nodes, for example, animals and flowers. Experienced craftsmen skip this stage, painting directly with paints. Knots, as a rule, are drawn with a lighter tone of paint (painting). Thin strokes of a dark shade (shadow) are applied to light spots, depicting details: flower petals, folds of clothing, interior details, etc. At the same stage, leaves and buds are depicted between large elements. The final stage painting - applying strokes and dots with black (living) and white (living) paint. These actions are performed with the thinnest brush and give the work a finished look. After the paint has dried, the product is coated with colorless varnish.

Materials: Tempera. You can use gouache with the addition of PVA glue.

Each primary color is made up of two shades: one bleached, the other more saturated.

Gorodets colors

The order of painting:

A) The painting is done directly on a wooden base or the base is primed with yellow, red, black colors.

B) On the cutting board or surface of another object chosen for painting, the composition of the future pattern is outlined with thin lines in pencil. The main thing is to outline the location and size of the main, brightest spots - for example, flowers. These are the nodes of the composition. The middle parts - unopened buds - connect the large parts with each other; small ones - twigs, leaves - complement the theme and have little effect on the overall composition.

IN) At the nodes of the composition, as a rule, spots of a regular round shape are applied with a wide brush - the base of the flower.

G) Thin strokes are applied over the light spots with a second, darker color of the same shade, for example, blue on blue - a stroke. The outline of the stroke is a drawing one, depicting the contours of the petals of a flower. At the same stage, leaves are depicted between the large elements, the shape of which is obtained with two or three brush strokes.

The entire painting consists of elements: circles - underpaintings, brackets, drops, dots, arcs, spirals, strokes.

D) The final stage of painting is applying strokes and dots with black and white paint. This technique is called “revival” and gives the work a finished look. Done with the thinnest brush.

E) After the tempera has dried, the product can be coated with colorless varnish.

Motives of Gorodets painting

The most common motives are:

Flowers- roses, roses with symmetrical leaves;

Birds

"Tree of Life" - traditional plot, personifying nature. On both sides of the “tree”, horses or birds can be depicted.

Horsemen, carriages, ladies, soldiers, gentlemen, dogs are traditional for the Gorodets story painting.

Types of Gorodets painting compositions

Exists three types of composition in Gorodets painting: flower painting, flower painting with the inclusion of the “horse” and “bird” motif and plot painting.

Flower painting

Floral painting is most often used, as it is the easiest to perform. In a less complex version, the work may depict a single flower with leaves radiating from it. In a more complex version, for example, a stripe of floral patterns is often depicted on the side walls, and the lid is decorated with flowers inscribed in a circle. On the lids of bread boxes, flowers are usually arranged in a rectangle or diamond shape.

In floral patterns, the following most common types of patterns can be distinguished:

"Bouquet"- depicted symmetrically. Usually written on cutting boards or dishes. Small bouquets of one to three flowers can be seen on small items such as boxes, cups, and salt shakers.

"Garland"- this is a type of “bouquet”, when one or two large flowers are located in the center, smaller flowers with leaves diverge from them to the sides. They can fit into a circle, a stripe, or be positioned in a crescent shape (on corner screens). This type of floral design composition is most often used when painting cutting boards, bread bins, boxes, dishes, and children's furniture.

"Rhombus"- one of the variants of the “garland”, when one or more flowers are written in the center, forming the center, and buds and leaves, gradually decreasing towards the tops of the diamond, are located along its imaginary edges. This floral arrangement can most often be seen on rectangular cutting boards, chests, benches, cabinet doors, and bread bins.

"Flower Strip"- preserved in the Gorodets craft from painted spinning wheels, where it separated the upper and lower tiers. Depending on what product it is written on, it can represent a repeating ribbon composition of flowers of the same size, separated by pairs of leaves, or the same composition in which alternate: flowers of the same size, but different in design; flowers of the same size, but different in color; flowers, different in design, color and size. Such ornamental stripes are usually used when painting three-dimensional items, such as round boxes. A narrow strip encircles the plot compositions. The wider strip is the middle tier in a three-tier composition.

"Wreath"- resembles a “flower stripe”, but only closed along the edge of a dish or box lid.

Floral arrangements are usually symmetrical in the arrangement of motifs and color distribution. Despite the existence of rigid schemes for constructing floral patterns, artists come up with countless variations of this painting.

Floral painting with the inclusion of the “horse” and “bird” motifs

A floral arrangement including the “horse” and “bird” motif is also very common in Gorodets painting. It can be seen on dishes and cutting boards, boxes and bread bins, children's furniture and even spoons. The inclusion of new motifs also increases the number of options for various compositions. Just like in flower painting, in products depicting a horse and a bird, the motifs can be symmetrical. They are located on the sides of a flowering tree or inside a flower garland. Sometimes, among a symmetrically written floral pattern, there are two birds, asymmetrical in design, sometimes different in color. In the case when the “horse” or “bird” motifs are depicted separately in the composition, the symmetry of the floral arrangement may or may not be preserved.

By performing this look on a set of cutting boards, Gorodets artists create symmetry within the set itself. So, if it consists of three boards, then the two outer ones will be symmetrical, although this symmetry is quite conditional. On the outer boards, various flower motifs can be depicted, or when writing birds, two motifs will be used: “rooster” and “hen”. Such an ornament looks amazingly beautiful and solid on decorative dishes, where the center is clearly defined. In addition, Gorodets craftsmen paint such patterns not only on a wood background, but also on colored backgrounds. They look especially impressive on black and red “linings,” although along with them, artists also use other colors, such as yellow, ocher, gold, orange, etc.

It is necessary to take into account that the zoomorphic motif introduced into this type of ornament introduces a certain semantic coloring. Thus, the image of the “rooster” or “horse” motif is interpreted as a messenger of the sun, a wish for happiness, good luck, and success. The paired image of a “rooster” and a “hen” symbolizes family well-being, wishing the family happiness and many children.

Subject painting

Subject painting is performed on large items: panels, chests and large boxes, cutting boards and dishes. The plot painting is usually done in two or three tiers (in the upper part the main plot is written with a feast, date, walk, departure, etc., in the lower part the plots help to reveal this topic). The middle part separating the tiers is presented in the form of a floral stripe. Another option is also possible: the main plot is depicted, surrounded by a floral stripe.

Story painting is one of the most labor-intensive and surprisingly beautiful views compositions of Gorodets painting. Here are dates and celebrations, get-togethers and feasts, holiday trips and farewells, illustrations for various fairy tales and scenes from modern life, and much, much more.

Decorative panels usually have a horizontally elongated rectangular shape. It can consist of three separate boards. They preserve those traditional techniques for organizing space that were developed by Gorodets artists back in late XIX V. These are columns standing on the sides, and rich, beautifully draped curtains on the sides and wall clocks hanging in the center of the depicted interior, huge windows and round tables. And the clothes of the main characters - young ladies and gentlemen - have not changed at all. Only the colors now used are brighter. Artists often divide horizontal panels, as well as vertical ones, into parts. The hero or group of main characters of the plot composition is usually located in the center of the horizontal painting or in the upper part of the vertical one. They stand out in color, size, tone, rhythm.

Images of columns and curtains can be used as a dividing motif. Thus, artists depict several rooms on decorative panels, and the central theme is connected in meaning to the scenes shown on the sides. There are paintings where the panel is divided into two parts. Then two semantic centers appear, inextricably related friend with each other, each part has its own center, and it is built according to general laws.

A unique reading of the characters in the plot composition. A male figure on a horse is interpreted as a groom, a lonely girl standing near a birch tree is interpreted as a bride. Scenes of a feast, tea party, wedding, evening are performed against the backdrop of a window with the obligatory inclusion of a table. The table is never empty, it is filled with cups, a samovar or a vase of flowers - this is a symbol of wealth and prosperity. Richly draped curtains and wall clocks carry the same semantic interpretation. The faces of people in Gorodets painting are always facing the viewer. It is very rare to find images rotated in three quarters.

Artists are not limited to depicting interior interiors. Village houses with carved shutters and frames, chimneys decorated with carved roosters, and wells with roofs decorated with horse heads appear on decorative canvases. Panels depicting street scenes are sometimes divided into parts. In the center, the main plot will be given; sometimes it can show the interior decoration of a rich house. But more often than not, modern Gorodets artists do not divide scenes of walking, going out and dating into parts. The panels reproduce entire streets with houses, fences, churches, and plant motifs in the form of trees. Animals are often written under the feet of the main characters - dogs, cats, cockerels, chickens. With this plot structure, the main characters are depicted in the foreground, larger than the secondary ones, and they are often highlighted in color. Despite the complexity of the subjects, artists always include flowers in the painting, even if a winter landscape is shown.

The tradition of signing works or accompanying them with folk proverbs and sayings goes back to the first painted Gorodets products of the last quarter of the 19th century. Folk wisdom, expressed in words, helps reveal the plot of the image, enlivens the drawn picture and emphasizes the enormous semantic meaning that the author invested in his product.

© "Encyclopedia of Technologies and Methods" Patlakh V.V. 1993-2007

Hello everyone! Today we have art on our agenda. Do you have any painted wooden bowl or spoon in bright golden-red colors in your home? Or maybe you inherited a joyful rocking horse with patterns? Then perhaps you already know what Gorodets painting is.

Well, if you still have a little poor idea of ​​the Gorodets masters, then I suggest you get to know their interesting work better.

Lesson plan:

Where did Gorodets art come from?

The story of one of the highest achievements folk art- Gorodets painting - began in the 19th century. Peasants lived on both banks of the Volga River in villages named Kurtsevo, Savino, Koskovo and others, who made carved spinning wheels and sold them at fairs.

And they decorated this carving to make their creations brighter.

Later, decorative drawing completely replaced wood carving from spinning wheels, and such painted art began to be called “Nizhny Novgorod painting”, and the masters themselves were called “Kurtsev dyers”.

This is interesting! Not everyone knows that the development of wood carving in Gorodets is due to Peter I, who asked each ship to be decorated with wooden carvings, showing the Russian power and talent of the Russian people. When construction moved closer to the seashores in the 18th century, Russian craftsmen found another use for their talent - they began to make spoons and bowls, cups and spinning wheels from wood.

It is believed that Gorodets painting flourished with the appearance in the village of Kurtsevo in 1870 of an icon painter from Gorodets named Ogurechnikov, who was invited to revive the painting of the Kurtsevo church. It was he who taught local craftsmen to apply paint in layers, enliven the picture with whitewash and give expressiveness to the drawing.

Starting painting with spinning wheels, Kurtsev craftsmen slowly began to hone their acquired skills on dishes, baskets, toys for children, and boxes. Unique lush bouquets, black horses, and strange birds appeared in the houses. They “drank tea” and “had festivities” on the tree.

Only in the 30s of the 20th century did the name of this painting on wood appear, which today we know and hear - “Gorodets painting”, and all thanks to the fact that such decorated household utensils were sold in the nearby town of Gorodets, and workshops operated.

There's a girl on the board

Or a daring fellow,

Miracle horse and miracle bird, -

So this is Gorodets!

How is Gorodets painting different?

It is difficult to confuse Gorodets craftsmanship with another, because this particular painting is replete with bright garlands and lush bouquets. Only here you will see all the pompousness of the plots along with the sincerity of the common people.

One has only to look at the objects painted in the Gorodets style, and you will immediately find yourself:

• on a walk as a horse rider;
• at the table during tea drinking, surrounded by rich decoration;
• together with hunters in the forest;
• in a circle of cheerful and carefree city people;
• or at the spinning wheel.

In addition to depicting the life of peasants and merchants, Gorodets artists could depict mystical animals. But no matter what theme was present in the drawing, it was always decorated with garlands of flowers.

From the very beginning, Gorodets painting was applied with egg paints in the form of large spots, without contours. Masters could make free-form brushstrokes, then outlining the elements with a black or white line. Favorite background colors:

• green;
• bright red;
• black;
• juicy blue.

Today, craftsmen in factories use oil paints, which gives them a greater variety of colors, but the features of Gorodets painting motifs have been preserved. The technology of painting on wood has also remained the same.

Yellow evening, black horse,

And the baths are like fire,

Birds look from the casket -

This is a painting of Gorodets!

How to draw in Gorodets

Gorodets craftsmen have their own technology for painting on wood. Initially, artists use a pencil to draw a thin line over the future drawing, outlining the location of its elements and their dimensions. The wooden base can be pre-coated with primer paint in one of the shades - red, yellow or black. Professionals do not waste time on sketching, but paint straight away.

For Gorodets painting, a special paint is used - tempera, which is made from natural or artificial powders. Sometimes craftsmen use gouache as an assistant and add PVA glue to it. But whatever the paint, the most important thing is its rich color, which is what distinguishes the painting from Gorodets.

The basis of all elements is drawn in white, this is called shading. Then the details are applied to the light tone with thin strokes. They do this with dark shades, which is why this step is called shading. On last stage When drawing with the thinnest brush, they do the so-called livening with black paint and livening with white paint in the form of dots and shading.

When the finished work is completely dry, it is coated with varnish. In general, it’s not that difficult. Want to try? Then read about what Gorodets masters usually paint.

Where are the buckets and rocking horses?

Very joyful tones

These are all wonderful works

Gorodets masters.

Gorodets compositions

Gorodets painting has three types of designs.

Flower theme

The simplest and therefore often used. It can be a single flower with leaves or a floral pattern in the form of bouquets, flower garlands, diamonds, stripes and wreaths. Bouquets are often drawn on kitchen boards and tableware, glasses, bowls and salt shakers.

Garlands are found on bread bins, furniture for children and souvenir boxes. Flower rhombuses decorate cabinets and benches. Stripes are used for painting three-dimensional objects, for example, to decorate a round box, or as an edging in a plot. The edges of the product are often painted with wreaths.

Composition with a drawing of a bird or horse

It is often used to paint large items - tableware, bread bins, children's furniture, but sometimes this theme can also be seen on an ordinary spoon. Such images look very beautiful on a black or red background.

Plot

The most difficult painting, which can be dedicated to dates or a feast, fairy tales or modern life. Typically, such drawings are elongated along a horizontal line. The picture may consist of several parts, separated by columns, curtains or other interior items. Sometimes in one story you can see several characters in different rooms.

Gorodets artists always depict grooms on horseback, and brides standing near birch trees. In scenes with a feast, the tables are always full of dishes, and the obligatory symbol on them is a samovar. Sometimes Gorodets artists paint entire villages with houses, wells, streets, and churches.

Today, modern masters of the Gorodets Painting factory continue the old traditions, creating masterpieces of artistic crafts in the form of boxes, bread bins, toys and furniture.

Flowers drawn

Unprecedented beauty.

There is no end to that beauty

This is all from Gorodets!

You can learn even more about the history of painting, see how real masters work and admire their works by watching this video.

So you got to know Gorodets painting better. If you are interested, you can now try to make a beautiful holiday gift for your mother with your own hands by painting a cutting board or box in the Gorodets style.

Well, for your teacher and classmates the best gift will become your interesting research project, dedicated to the work of Gorodets masters.

Good luck in your studies!

Evgenia Klimkovich.

The birthplace of Gorodets painting was the Volga region, namely the villages of Khlebaikha, Kurtsevo, Koskovo, Savino, Bukino and others, located along the banks of the Volga tributary of the clean and bright river Uzola. There, peasants from several villages painted spinning wheels and took them to sell their products at the Nizhny Novgorod fair. That’s why the painting was first called Nizhny Novgorod. More precisely, even before the appearance of this painting, spinning wheels were decorated with carvings. Over time, the carvings began to be slightly tinted to make them more elegant, and later the carvings on spinning wheels were completely replaced by painting.

Uzola River

Why was the painting called Grodec painting?

The name “Gorodetskaya” appeared only in the 1930s after the appearance of the works of one of the most famous researchers of folk culture, V.M. Vasilenko. In earlier editions, we talk about “Nizhny Novgorod painting” or “Kurtsev dyers”. The new name stuck because Gorodets was the main market for Uzol painted utensils and also had wood painting workshops. But the most important thing: the very content of the painting is connected with him, his way of life, narratives, and images, starting from the mid-19th century. The famous Uzol painting grew out of the entire artistic culture of Gorodets and its environs, the history of which goes back more than eight centuries.

View of Gorodets from the Volga. Mid-19th century

Gorodets has long been famous for its “dead” wood carving, as there were most craftsmen who worked with wood. The forest provided cheap material that was always at hand. This carving is created with an ax and chisel.

The bright pages of the history of the folk craft that arose here are associated with the activities of Peter I in creating the Russian navy. Each ship was certainly decorated with wooden carvings, demonstrating both the military power of Russia and the artistic talent of the peoples who inhabited it. During the 18th century, shipbuilding moved closer to the conquered shores of the seas. Talented craftsmen had to look for new uses for their accumulated experience. Some began to carve spoons, others sharpened bowls and cups, and still others made tools for spinning and weaving. The bottoms for spinning wheels, which were then decorated, gained particular popularity. The bottom of the spinning wheel is a seat that was not visible during operation. But, having finished spinning, the peasant woman hung the bottom on the wall, and it became an adornment of her modest life.

Bottom of the spinning wheel

Where can you see a spinning wheel now? Only in the museum. The spinning wheel consists of a comb, a bottom and a spindle. The bottom is a wide board on which the spinner sat. The bottom of the spinning wheels was painted. After work, the spindles were put into a box, and the bottom was hung on the wall, like a picture.

Samples of spinning wheels collected in museums show how the technique of decorating the bottom changed from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. Carving was replaced by inlay from pieces of bog oak, followed by painting, which can be done easier and faster.

The heyday of Gorodets painting is associated with the arrival in 1870 of the icon painter Ogurechnikov from Gorodets to the village of Kurtsevo, who was invited to renovate the painting of the local church. It was he who helped local masters master painting techniques that had long been used in painting icons: methods of applying layers of paint, “living up” with whitewash - everything that gives the painting completeness and expressiveness. Masters had long been using tint on inlaid objects, so they were ready to adopt the painting technique. At the end of the 19th century, cheap factory-made chintz appeared, which replaced hand-made fabrics. The bottoms, combs, and spindles so necessary for the manual production of fabrics became unnecessary in factories. The best examples of spinning wheels, made with love and talent, took their rightful place in museums and became an example for future generations.

N.N. Noskova. Icon Mother of God "Everlasting color". 2005 The traditions of the old masters of icon painting are still alive today. There is an icon painting workshop at the Gorodets Painting factory. The well-known icon-painting plot was written using the Gorodets ornament.

Later they began to paint not only spinning wheels, but also all kinds of objects from peasant life - baskets, salt shakers, wooden toys, boxes for storing yarn and many other products. The colors of Gorodets painting were always bright and rich, all products were always decorated with lush bouquets of flowers reminiscent of roses and daisies. As the craft developed (by the end of the nineteenth century, residents of a dozen villages were involved in it), the design of the painting was also supplemented with new subjects. Characters from folk tales, scenes from city life, all kinds of “tea parties” and festivities appeared.”

Gorodets painting in our time

By the beginning of the 20th century, the fishery slowly fell into decline, and soon ceased to exist altogether. Gorodets painting began to recover only in the 30s, when a painters’ workshop opened. Later, already in the 50s, an artel was formed. Nowadays, the legacy of the old masters and their best traditions is sought to be revived by artists working at the Gorodets Painting factory in Gorodets, which was established in 1960. Fortunately, the ancient Volga region painting is now in the capable hands of talented contemporary artists. Five of them are Repin Prize laureates. This is the highest award for artists in our country. The names of these artists: Bespalova L.F., Kubatkina L.A., Kasatova F.N., Rukina T.M., Sokolova A.V. There was a time when Gorodets painting almost died, but there were kind and talented people who revived it. They are our national pride. Nowadays, masters work in an art workshop in Gorodets and teach their students.

Bibliography