Vikentii Trofimov - Old Voronezh

Old Voronezh

At the beginning of 1920 Vikentii Trofimov was invited to take part in very interesting work. Professor Uspenskiy created a Committee of Archeology (the predecessor of the Community of Saving of Art Monuments) and this Committee invited some painters (locals as well as famous painters such as Apollinary Vasnetsov) to draw old places of the town in order to save them for the future. Trofimov painted some works about the Old Voronezh. For this task he studied archive documents in order to recreate monuments which were no longer in existence at the time. His painting "Uspenskaya Church and the houses of Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov and Apraksin in Peter the Great Period" drew on the ancient prints and other works kept in the Ivan Kramskoi Museum in Voronezh. These works were also published in the book "Old Voronezh" by Prof. Uspenskiy. Much later, in March 1986 on the Conference of Regional Studies in Voronezh, an address on Trofimov was presented as well as a show of his works. Some articles about his art were published; for example, there is a little citation: "The painter Vikentii Trovimov mostly worked in his favourite watercolour technique though he was able to paint in oil in the same light and transparent manner. His style was honoured by Igor Grabar, who described the paintings by Trofimov as documentary and pictorial portraits of architectural monuments which were correct down to the number of bricks".