An Old House on Tilto Street

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1875–1957), who came from a family of Lithuanian gentry, grew up in Vilnius, where he attended the Second Boys’ Gymnasium. He studied art and law in St Petersburg, and at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries he attended the art schools of Anton Ažbe and Simon Hollósy in Munich, and Vasiliy Mate’s engraving workshop in St Petersburg. In 1902, he joined the St Petersburg society of artists called The World of Art, which developed the principles of Art Nouveau, Symbolism and Retrospectivism in art. Dobuzhinsky was well known as an artist: his graphic works depicting St Petersburg and other old towns are distinguished by the poetisation of their historic architecture and his skilful draughtsmanship. While he was living in St Petersburg in the early 20th century, he visited Vilnius, and produced some pictures of the city of his youth. This lithograph shows the 18th-century Baroque residence of the Rževuskis family on Tilto Street, with its splendid porch and a view of the cathedral portico behind it. Nothing more has remained from its former grandeur; the deserted yard evokes memories of the past busy life. There is a watercolour of the same subject by Dobuzhinsky in the M.K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum in Kaunas, and at the beginning of the 20th century the St Eugene Society of St Petersburg published a card based on it. Text author Laima Laučkaitė.