The story
Kazan's fine-arts museum sits in a white mansion built in 1906 for the commander of the local military district, a garden still opening behind it. Since 1958 it has held the art of Tatarstan and Russia, and it leans on two painters with roots in this region.
One is Ivan Shishkin, the great painter of Russian forests, born just up the river Kama at Yelabuga. After the Tretyakov in Moscow and the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Kazan holds the most of his work, from student sketches to the pine woods of his last years.
The other is Nikolai Feshin, born in Kazan itself, who painted quick, sensuous portraits before emigrating to America after the Revolution and reinventing himself in New Mexico. The museum keeps a strong group of his early Russian work, and also guards old Russian icons and the folk art of the Tatar and Volga peoples.
