The Russian Museum

This booklet is devoted to one of the various from of Russian folk art - Krestetsky stitching. It traces the history of an entire handicraft based on the picturesque Valdai and Krestetsky districts, the long and painstaking accumulation of the technical devices of its lace embroidery, the establishment of the ornamental traditions, and the various masters who created these minor masterpieces.

This booklet accompanied the bicentenary exhibition of the works of Vasily Sadovnikov, presenting the art of this outstanding nineteenth-century master to the general public for the first time. The publication includes an article on the artist's life and work and a catalogue of his most important paintings. The majority of watercolours are reproduced here for the first time.

A student of Anton Losenko and a contemporary of Fyodor Rokotov and Dmitry Levitsky, Gavriil Skorodumov was perhaps the first Russian engraver to win fame in Europe. This publication presents his works now in the collection of the Russian Museum.