Product Description
Tale of Tsar Saltan. (Авторское Исполнение В. Тихомиров Мстера 1981). The well-known Tale of the Tsar Saltan begins with the following:
Three maidens under the window were spinning late into the evening.
"If I were a queen," says one maiden, "I would prepare a feast for the whole Christian world."
"If I were a queen," says her sister, "I would weave linen for the whole world."
"If I were a queen," says the third sister, "I would give birth to a hero for my father the Tsar."
Since this painted box is an "artist's original" (Авторское Исполнение), the painter, Tikhomirov, has chosen to depict the moment when the Tsar, who has been eavesdropping, bursts into the room, and takes the third sister by the hand. Pushkin's tale is a fairy tale in verse, and is long and rewarding, and well worth finding (the internet is teeming with variations of it) in book form.
V. Tikhomirov is probably Valentin Leonidovich (b. 1947 in Mstera). He studied at the Mstera Art Vocational School from 1963-1967. One of his teachers was Ekaterina Nikolaevna Zonina (b. 1919), who studied at the Megerskaya art vocational school from 1934-1937. Valentin Leonidovich was at the Proletarskoe Iskusstvo workshops beginning in 1967 and was chief artist there from 1978-1980)
The painting is refined, handmade from start to finish, using egg tempera, lacquer, papier-mache and metallic paints. It is finished with an intricate free-hand border. The box is 4"x4"x2½" and is hinged. It is in excellent condition (some of the photos show "hot spots" from the camera). With original case (which is a bit weathered, but complete).
Mstera, or Mstyora (Мстёра) miniatures are different from the Palekh and Kholui, though, on first glance, seem the same. Characteristically, Mstera painters chose a lighter background for their work, with black being all but absent from their palette. The village of Mstera is located in the center of the Vladimir-Suzdal province on two rivers. The landscape of the village is reflected in the fields and foliage of many Mstera boxes.
