In the Tver region, on the northeastern shore of Lake Udomlya, just opposite the village of Garusovo, in a small array of old spruces and birches, there is an art museum, famous throughout the country - the dacha "The Seagull" by academician of painting Vitold Kaetanovich Byalynitsky-Biruli (1872-1957 )

You begin to be enchanted by the beauty of these places long before the entrance to the dacha-museum.

Lake Udomlya near the village of Garusovo

On a hill, on the northeastern shore of the lake, a huge stone is installed in memory of Russian artists who worked in the Udomel region

A marble plaque with the names of wonderful Russian artists who once visited these places, and then glorified their beauty in their paintings, sketches and drawings, is fortified on the stone.

Local residents claim that the stone was installed approximately in the very place from which the famous painting by Isaac Levitan "Above Eternal Peace" was painted, which is now kept in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Of course, Levitan did not paint the picture from this place, he painted it in the studio. Maybe some black-and-white photograph of the landscape was taken from this place, which captured the bizarre contours of the shore of Lake Udomli and gloomy leaden clouds.

(a reproduction of the painting is taken from the Russian Wikipedia)

In my picture (photo below) the contours of the coastline are just as bizarre, but the horizon is decorated with the most powerful cooling towers of the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), and the whole sky is covered with cheerful clouds of good weather

Lake Udomlya

At the entrance to the dacha-museum

View of the cottage-museum from the north side

Commemorative plaque

Hall on the first floor of the summer cottage. The piano, although old, has nothing to do with the artist; it was donated to the museum by some military unit... A wooden staircase leads to the second floor, where the accounting department is located, in which payments are made daily for the financial services of five rooms of the museum, the salaries of several employees, including the accountants themselves

Hall on the first floor of the cottage

Hall on the first floor of the cottage

"Golden Autumn" is one of the most famous paintings by Isaac Levitan
If I knew that a picture familiar to me from a children's ABC book depicts my beloved ... the Sezha River near the village of Ostrovno. It was there that I, still a student of the 9th grade, had an unforgettable (after all, it is difficult to erase something very vivid from memory from childhood) meeting with a big pike. The fact that in this picture the artist depicted precisely the Syezha river and precisely near Ostrovno was a shock for me, the most pleasant discovery in my 59 years

Continuation of the exposition

Model of the estate in Garusovo The estate stood for a century, survived the Great Patriotic War, but did not survive the post-perestroika time - it was plundered and destroyed completely and finally

Continuation of the museum exposition. Yes, the artists did not have a weak rest in those days. Wow - three bears in one hunt !! Now, even our rulers in the Zavidovo hunting sector never dreamed of this, but here the simple Russian painter A.V. Moravov. - bam and three bears are gone ... Oh, I apologize, he is not a simple artist, but an Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR since 1946 and a full member of the USSR Academy of Arts since 1949

Continuation of the museum exposition in the same first hall on the same first floor

In the second hall there is a traveling exhibition of copies and reproductions (!!) from famous paintings by Russian artists - Shishkin, Aivazovsky, etc. Then there is the children's drawing room, where the originals are already exhibited - drawings by children of the Udomel and Vyshnevolotsky districts of the Tver region

And the last exhibition hall on the ground floor is a children's art hall, where handicrafts made by children are exhibited.
Children are brought here to classes with Udomlya and even Vyshny Volochek

Children's creativity hall

Children's creativity hall

Children's creativity hall

The model of the Russian bath: firstly, it is collapsible, and secondly, it is made by the hands of schoolchildren

View of the cottage-museum from the south side. By the way, the architectural style of the dacha is called Finnish Art Nouveau.
The house was built in 1913, and the influence of Finland on architecture at that time was very great
(remember at least a hut in Razliv near St. Petersburg).

A wonderful park near the dacha, but very small - you won't walk, you won't think about the fate of Russian artists at your leisure

Views outside the territory of the cottage-museum. This is a view of the village of Garusovo

And this is a short alley at the entrance to the country house.

Landscapes in the area of ​​the cottage-museum

Landscapes in the area of ​​the cottage-museum

The most famous of the monuments of civil architecture in the Udomel region, in addition, one of the few, which is in a relatively decent condition. Dacha "Chaika" is an example of a rich suburban dacha of the capital type in the Art Nouveau style, with a small landscape park. Built in 1913 by the artist V.K. Byalynitskiy-Birulya (1872-1957), who lived here until his death. Despite the fact that the magnificent collection of paintings, the artist's archive and library were taken out back in the 1970s, the dacha itself was nationalized only in 1978 (!), Which allowed it to happily escape the fate of almost all old estates, in which life was interrupted for a long time , dooming buildings to death or complete reconstruction.

Currently, this is almost the only pre-revolutionary manor in the region that was not taken away from the owners or redesigned in the 1920s-1930s, preserving the indescribable spirit of the old dwelling.

The "Seagull" owes its uniqueness to the fact that practically all the color of Russian culture of the "Silver Age" has been within its walls. Some of them are mentioned by this stele, installed at the place where Isaac Levitan wrote sketches for "Above Eternal Peace". The initial "museum character" allowed the estate to avoid ruin.

The dacha was built, according to legend, by an artel of carpenters from the Ostashkovsky district, who built several more similar houses for wealthy summer residents in the vicinity of Lake Udomlya (one of them survived in Udomlya near the railway station). The building is typical of the Art Nouveau style wooden house, consisting of several complexly composed volumes, picturesquely looking from different sides:

The broken lines of roofs and facades, asymmetric windows of various shapes, widely spaced cornices with hanging wooden "weights" are characteristic of Art Nouveau and are brilliantly executed on the "Seagull".

On one of the gables there is an image of a seagull, after which the dacha is named.

Only the layout, interior doors and other joinery have survived from the interiors. There are few old things. However, the historical atmosphere is maintained thanks to the building's museum regime.

Behind the dacha, a park has been preserved, which has been heavily thinned out by winds from the lake. The rise of water during the regulation of the lakes for the construction of a cooling reservoir at the KNPP also had a negative effect on the state of the park.

"The Seagull" is a unique case in our days when the old house is actually supported by the forces of enthusiasts who support Russian culture and the preservation of historical memory. Although the building is rapidly and inevitably dilapidated (considerable funds are needed to maintain it and at least current repairs), we attribute the "Seagull" to White paper precisely as a modern example of at least an attempt to preserve the remnants of the national treasure.

The ceremonial photo of "The Seagulls" is taken from the site Udomlya tourist office "Odyssey". You can also get there about the dacha, its current state and conditions of visit detailed information.

Pavel Ivanov. Photo March 2009.

The state of the estate after restoration 2015-2016 (March 2017):

Fortunately, we can say that the threat of destruction of the building from this side has passed. The house is inhabited, an atmospheric, interesting atmosphere is created in it, museum events are held. The plans are to restore the park and the surrounding area. "The Seagull" is a branch of the Tver Regional Picture Gallery.