Artworks of Russian sculptor Vladimir M. Pashchenko (1854–1908) in the Ural artistic cast iron of the late 19th – early 20th centuries

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of attribution (establishing the authorship and the initial period of production) of decorative and applied art objects made at the Kusa and Kasli factories in the Urals, made according to the models of the forgotten Russian sculptor and public figure in the field of art-industrial education V.M. Pashchenko (1854–1908). The research material includes images and data on cast-iron objects in the holdings of a number of Russian museums and private collections, the Kasli Architectural and Artistic Casting Plant, price lists and factory albums of the Kasli and Kusa factories, exhibition catalogues of all-Russian and international exhibitions of the late 19th – the early 20th century, cast-iron objects from private collections, published historical, archival and bibliographic research, including archival pre-revolutionary periodicals. Based on the biographical, formal-stylistic and comparative methods, as well as connoisseurship, the study had the following results. The author reconstructed the creative biography of Vladimir Mikhailovich Pashchenko. His authorship of model prototypes and the year of the beginning of production for four decorative and applied objects of the Ural cast-iron art, made in the style of Decadent and cast in the late 19th – the early 20th century at the Kusa and Kasli factories was established and confirmed. Also, one more work of the sculptor in the technique of artistic casting — a vase “In the form of an urn, with the figure of a weeping woman” cast by the Kusa factory — was introduced and attributed for the first time.