三勇士

Viktor Vasnetsov chased this picture for the better part of 20 years. He made his first sketches back in the 1870s and did not finish the huge canvas, nearly three metres by four, until 1898, much of it in a converted barn at the Abramtsevo estate outside Moscow. The three riders are bogatyrs, the warrior-heroes of old Russian folk epics. In the centre on the black horse is Ilya Muromets, the figure Vasnetsov struggled longest to get right, flanked by Dobrynya Nikitich and the younger Alyosha Popovich. They sit at the edge of the open steppe, watching the horizon, guarding the borderland. Pavel Tretyakov bought the painting the moment it was done, and it has stayed in his Moscow gallery ever since.