Timkov, Nikolai Efimovich

Nikolai Timkov was born on August 12, 1912 in the village of Nakhichevan cottages in the suburbs of Rostov-on-Don. His parents, Efim Egorovich Timkov and Vasilisa Timofeevna Ablyazova, Saratov peasants, moved to Rostov-on-Don in 1892. My father worked as a laborer, the family had four older children. Parents died in 1924, when Timkov was in his twelfth year ^[4] . The elder sisters took care of him.

In 1927, Timkov graduated from the 8th grade of high school and entered the Rostov Art College , which was headed by landscape painter A. S. Chinyonov , a student of Vasily Polenov and a big fan of I. Levitan . About the level of training received there A. Borovsky notes that already in the Rostov Art College Timkov developed as a professional. ^[five]

After graduating from college, Timkov went to Moscow, where he soon met P. Radimov and other Moscow artists of the Russian Academy of Arts . He works as an unskilled laborer at Izogiz, and later joins the All-Artists partnership as a graphic designer. At the same time, he is engaged in self-education in the Tretyakov Gallery and works persistently in the open air, from time to time using the friendly advice of M. Nesterov and S. Malyutin . In the apartment of Radimov in Verkhnyaya Maslovka in 1930, Timkov met I. Brodsky , who played a large role in the fate of the artist. After seeing Timkov’s work, I. Brodsky advised him to go to Leningrad to continue his studies. ^[6]

In 1933, Timkov arrived in Leningrad and was admitted to the first year of the painting department of the IZHSA VAC . He studied with M. Bernshtein , A. Rylov , A. Lyubimov , V. Serov . In 1939 he graduated from the institute in the workshop of I. Brodsky with the title of artist of painting. Thesis - the picture "A day off in the country" ^[7] . In one issue with Timkov, the institute graduated from Nikolai Andretsov , Peter Belousov , Gleb Werner , Alexey Gritsay , Evgeny Zhukov, Mikhail Kozell , Lev Orekhov , Leah Ostrov , Elena Skuin , Boris Scherbakov and other young artists who later became famous Soviet painters.

After graduating from the Timkov Institute, they are called up for military service in the Baltic Fleet ; it continues until 1946. During the Great Patriotic War and the blockade, Timkov was among the defenders of Leningrad. He served in the Political Administration of the LVO, on an armored train, on gunboats. He worked on a series of landscapes "Leningrad in blockade." ^[8] Creates a series of graphic works (gouache, watercolor), depicting the besieged Leningrad, among them “On the Neva River for Water” ^[9] , “Winter”, “Spring” (both 1942), “Leningrad on the day of the breaking of the blockade”, “ On the Neva ”,“ Nut ”,“ Trophies ”(all 1943),“ Barges on the Neva ”,“ Neva Embankments ” ^[10] (both 1944) and others (currently in the collection of the State Russian Museum and the Museum of the History of the City ). Timkov participated in all exhibitions of the artists of the besieged city and the defenders of Leningrad ^{[11] [12] [13]} , in the exhibition “Heroic Front and Rear” in Moscow in the Teretyakov Gallery (1943) ^[14] , as well as in creating the largest during the war years the exhibition “Heroic Defense of Leningrad” ^[15] , opened in 1944 in Solyaniy Lane and which laid the foundation for the Museum of Defense of Leningrad . He was awarded the medals "For the Defense of Leningrad" , "For the Victory over Germany . " ^[sixteen]

In 1943, Timkov was admitted to the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists . Timkov’s first participation in the exhibition dates back to 1929 (Rostov-on-Don). In 1947, the first personal exhibition of the artist’s works was opened in the halls of the LSSH , which was then shown at the Leningrad House of Cinema and the House of Arts. Since the late 1940s, Timkov has been a constant participant in Leningrad, republican and all-union exhibitions. His personal exhibitions of works were held in Leningrad in 1957 in LOSH (then shown in the master’s homeland in Rostov-on-Don), in 1964 in Leningrad, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Kislovodsk, Rostov-on-Don, Ordzhonikidze, Nalchik, in 1976 in Leningrad in LOSH, in 1982 in Moscow in the halls of the Moscow House of Artists on the Kuznetsk bridge, which was then shown at the Yu.A. Gagarin Air Force Academy and in Star City.

In 1987, Nikolai Timkov was awarded the honorary title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR . The last lifetime retrospective exhibition of works by N. E. Timkov took place in 1993 in the halls of the St. Petersburg Union of Artists.

Nikolai Efimovich Timkov died on December 25, 1993 in St. Petersburg in the eighty-second year of life. He was buried at the Kovalevsky cemetery ^[17] . His works are stored in the State Russian Museum ^[18] , in the Hermitage, the State Tretyakov Gallery , the Rostov Regional Museum of Fine Arts , in numerous museums and private collections in Russia ^[19] , USA ^[20] , France ^[21] , Great Britain, Japan ^{[ 22]} and other countries.

A rare phenomenon, but already Timkov’s first independent work - the siege landscapes of Leningrad - were noted by contemporaries as an artistic phenomenon and became classics of the genre. According to A. Borovsky, “the piercing immediacy of vision is distinguished by his blockade gouaches, which have become classic - in the most difficult conditions of the surrounded, hungry blockade of Leningrad being, he showed energy and passion of resistance. He will retain these qualities forever. " ^[five]

In the first post-war decade, Timkov’s pictorial style developed and improved in the direction outlined during his student years. He was completely influenced by Russian landscape painters of the 19th century. The real space in his works was conveyed with almost illusory accuracy, the color characteristic is restrained, the colors are muffled. In the Don and Volga landscapes, Timkov strove to cover as much space as possible, to depict a lot of clearly readable plans, which lay in line with the general tendency of the development of the genre of these years. Among the famous works of the artist of this period, “Harvesting” (1950) ^[23] , “Lights of the collective farm hydroelectric station” , “Harvest soon” (both 1951) ^[24] , “Winter landscape” (1952) ^[25] , “Don Dali” (1953), “Evening on the Don” , “On the Don” (both 1954) ^[23] , “Silent Autumn. On the Don ” , “ Last Snow ” , “ Toward Spring ” (all 1955) ^[26] , “ Windy Day ” , “ Evening ” (both 1956) ^[27] , “ Ice is on ” ^[28] , “ Evening on the Volga ” ^[29] (both 1957) and others.

According to critics, Timkov’s sketches are most interesting: “Landscape” (1954), “Spring Landscape” (1955), “Vyra” ^[30] , “Zimka” (both 1956), “On the Volga” ^[31] , “White night ” (both 1957), “ The Last Ray ” , “ By the Spring ” , “ Osinki ” (all 1958) ^[32] and others. In them, the artist often manages to maintain the freshness of the impression of a direct perception of nature. But an etude in those years was considered only as an auxiliary material for a landscape painting, with its considerable size, an indispensable genre-narrative beginning, with careful selection and scrupulous study of details and alignment of the composition. It is not surprising, therefore, that at a personal exhibition in 1957 in the Leningrad Union of Artists (then shown in his homeland in Rostov-on-Don), Timkov appears as a gifted and serious professional, whose work, however, has not yet gone beyond the postulates and techniques that existed in Soviet landscape painting 1940-1950 years ^[33] . But, according to the critic, there was already something in the works that distinguished them from the general series. The outstanding talent of the artist, a rare natural sense of color are visible in them, a sincere and confident own voice was heard in choosing a theme and revealing an image. The intensified decorativeness of the painting, the generalization of the pattern and form, the tendency to build the composition around large volumes and planes attracted attention.

According to critics, Timkov finds his recognizable handwriting in the works of the first half of the 1960s. They trace the obvious development of the artist’s manner from the traditional plein air writing towards impressionistic enrichment and refinement of color, enhancing decorativeness, stylization and some conventionality of the drawing. “Timkov’s landscapes,” wrote the artist A. Yar-Kravchenko in the “Soviet Culture” about the 1964 Moscow exhibition, “are always colored with a lyrical feeling. He knows how to find such colors, such light, such emotions that give his canvases a special poetic mood. When I look at Timkov’s landscapes, I always feel the excitement of the artist-poet, he creates them ” ^[35] . Timkov’s colorful range of works became extremely wide in the 1960s, their color was sonorous, decorative-planar, but not local, but subtly related to the relief, with the expressive capabilities of the surface of the canvas, texture, brushstroke. ^[36]

In the works of this period, Timkov’s pictorial talent is revealed in all types of creativity - from landscape paintings to full-scale studies of small forms. “The penetrated love of nature, its poetic perception, the ability to find beauty in any seemingly inconspicuous corner - this is what is most characteristic of this master,” wrote one of the Leningrad newspapers about Timkov’s landscapes ^[37] . Among them is “Evening. The Lilac Hour " ^[38] , " The Beginning of Spring " , " Greens " (all 1959), " August. Academic Dacha " , " March Sun " , " October. The First Snow ” (all 1960) ^[39] , “ The First Snow ” ^[40] (1961), “ On the Tez River ” ^[41] , “ Street in Kholuy ” ^[42] , “ Autumn Cherries ” (all 1962), “ February Azure " ^[43] (1963), " Staraya Ladoga " , " Morning " (both 1963), " Academic Dacha " (1964), " In March " ^[44] , " Field " ^[45] (both 1965), “Spring” , “Gold of Autumn” , “Volkhov. The Last Snow ” ^[46] (all 1967), “ Torzhok ” , “ Sunny Day ” , “ Winter Has Come ” ^[47] (both 1968).

In the famous painting “Russian winter. Hoarfrost ” ^{[48] [49] [50] [51]} (1969) old poplars under fluffy snow caps in bluish hoarfrost on the banks of the Msta River were transferred to Timkov as the embodiment of the beauty and grandeur of Russian nature. Perhaps, for the first time, it clearly and convincingly showed a new quality in the artist’s painting - the monumentality of a figurative solution that arose after a trip a year earlier to the Urals . ^[52]

From now on, until the end of his life, most of the work will be created by Timkov in the village of Valentinovka and its environs near Vyshny Volochyok . Here, in the words of M. Etkind, will be his main workshop ^[36] . He will work here every year from April-May to November, sometimes in winter, writing the shores of Msta and Lake Mstinsky , the nearby villages of Kotchishche, Bolshoy and Maly Gorodok, Podil, Kisharino, Terpigorevo. Here he wrote the works “Valentine's Day” ^[53] (1968), “April” , “Lake of Mstinsky” ^[54] , “At the beginning of March” ^[55] (both 1971), “Blue June” ^[56] , “May. Bird cherry blossoms " ^[57] , " In the early spring " , " Academic summer cottage " (all 1972), " In the snow " (1973), " Pereslavl-Zalessky. Danilovsky Monastery ” (1974), “ Field ” , “ Snow Field ” ^[58] , “ February ” ^[59] (all 1975) and many others.

After a successful exhibition in 1976, Timkov continued to work actively in Valentinovka, and also in his Leningrad workshop in the house of artists on Pesochnaya Embankment , traveled to Crimea, Khosta, and traveled to France and Yugoslavia. Among the paintings and sketches written during these years, First Snow , Autumn ^[60] (both 1977), Torzhok , Rains ^[61] (both 1978), Evening on the Lake (1979) ^{[ 62]} , “First Snow” , “In the Garden” , “City of Torzhok. Winter ” , “ Winter Morning ” , “ Summer Evening ” ^[63] (all 1980), “ Spring ” ^[64] (1982), “ Twilight ” ^[65] (1983), “ Crimea ” ^[66] (1988), "Pereslavl-Zalessky" ^[67] (1992) and many others.

Shortly after the death of N.E. Timkov, almost all of his works stored in the workshop, with a total number of over a thousand, were purchased from the heirs and exported to the United States. There, his work received recognition and aroused great interest. Two monographs published in the USA ^{[68] [69] are} devoted to the work of N. Timkov. Exhibitions of his works were held in San Francisco (1998, 2000, 2001), Aspen (1999), New York (1999, 2001), Scottsdale (2000), Palm Beach (2000), Vale (2001), Washington (2001) and other cities. This brought Timkov wide fame and fame as a “Russian impressionist”. One of the first Soviet artists of the second half of the twentieth century and, perhaps, the first landscape painter, Nikolai Timkov was ranked in the West among the largest masters of painting of the twentieth century.

Famous paintings, graphic and sculptural portraits of N. Timkov, performed in different years by Leningrad artists and sculptors, including P. D. Buchkin (1960) ^[70] , N. N. Babasyuk (1963) ^[71] , A. A Murzin (1964, 1978) ^{[72] [73]} . In the Yaroslavl-Rostov Art Museum, a painting by G. Savinov “Sailors. 1942 ” (1964), on which N. Timkov is depicted in the image of a marine man immersed in his thoughts in a black pea jacket and white helmet. ^[74]

• Fine art of Leningrad
• Landscape painting in the fine arts of Leningrad
• Leningrad Union of Artists
• Academic Cottage
• House of Artists "Staraya Ladoga"

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• Exhibition of works by artist Nikolai Timkov in the St. Petersburg gallery ARKA
• Ivanov S.V. Nikolay Timkov. Back to the roots. On the centenary of the artist’s birthday.
• Artist Nikolay Timkov. Painting 1950-1980 (VIDEO)
• Ivanov S.V. Nikolai Timkov and Leningrad landscape painting. On the centenary of the artist's birthday