№ 2147-2148. Abramtsevo State Historical, Artistic and Literary Museum-Reserve

 

The Abramtsevo Museum Reserve is located 60 km from Moscow, not far from Sergiyev Posad. The museum complex comprises architectural monuments of the 18th and the 19th centuries (6 of them are monuments of federal importance), a park and a scenic surrounding area of the Vorya River, where outstanding Russian artists created their works of art. The museum collection contains more than 25,000 objects — paintings, drawings, ceramics, photos, sculptures and others.

In 1843, Sergey Aksakov (1791–1859), a writer, civil servant and public person, book and theater critic, as well as an author of memoirs and books about fishing and hunting, bought Abramtsevo. There, he created his best works Notes on Fishing, Notes of a Hunter in Orenburg Province, autobiographical novels A Family Chronicle and Childhood Years of the Bagrov Grandson, a fairy tale The Scarlet Flower. Such writers as Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Aleksey Khomyakov, Mikhail Shchepkin and others visited the estate when the Aksakovs owned it.

Savva Mamontov (1841-1918), a railway mogul, philanthropist and founder of the first private opera in Russia, purchased Abramtsevo in 1870. During this time, Vasily Polenov, Viktor Vasnetsov, Ilya Repin, Ilya Ostroukhov, Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov, Mikhail Vrubel and other artists, musicians and actors lived and worked in the estate. The creative collaboration of these artists left its mark in the history of art as the Abramtsevo Circle, which laid the foundations of national, neo-Russian art movement of the Art Nouveau style and determined the work the World of Art association, the Konstantin Stanislavski Moscow Art Theatre and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev at the turn of the 20th century. The members of the Abramtsevo Circle created one of the first museums of works of Russian folk art, and the Abramtsevo workshops initiated the revival and development of old crafts, such as woodcarving and majolica production.

The postage stamps bear portraits of Sergei Aksakov and Savva Mamontov; the souvenir sheet margins feature the main manor of the Abramtsevo Museum Reserve.