The talented icon painter and miniaturist Yevgeny Vasilyevich Yurin (1898–1983) was born in Mstyora into a family of icon painters. He attended the Mstyora Icon Painting School from 1909 to 1913 and then worked in local icon painting workshops. Yurin perfectly mastered the technique of miniature painting on papier-mâché, participated in many art exhibitions and joined the Artists’ Union of the USSR in 1940.
Icon painters are often divided into two groups: some paint exclusively clothes, landscape elements and chambers, while others paint the faces, hands and other exposed parts of the saint’s body. Yevgeny Yurin belonged to the first group — he painted the clothes of saints in gold and decorated icons with ornamental patterns. Yurin mastered the technique of “decorating with assist”, which consists in applying gold leaf to create gold highlights on saints’ garments, angel wings, tables or domes. Assist symbolizes the presence of divine light in the icon.
Yevgeny Yurin began his career by endeavoring to develop a version of the still life genre in the style of Mstyora miniature. From 1936, he worked almost exclusively in the field of ornamental painting. He painted boxes and caskets of various shapes: oval, round, square and rectangular. For his compositions, the artist often chose items that were seldom used for miniature lacquer painting, such as teapots, beads, eyeglass cases, napkin rings, and needle holders.
Usually, Yurin depicted bouquets, fruits or berries
in the center of the lid of the box — in a circle or oval on a colored
background. In his work “Ornament”, fruits, flowers and berries are painted in
a circle on a background of neutral golden-ochre color. All shapes are
abundantly highlighted with gold strokes that imitate light reflections. In the
corners, like peculiar “sails”, there are complex ornamental patterns of
stylized plants, made with gold powder. The technique of painting in gold
perfectly combines with the black background of the lacquer box and gives the
artist ample opportunities to use the black background as part of the color
palette. The rest of the lid space is filled with the finest swirls, flowers
and dots, forming a bright shimmering background.
