Msta River
In the artistic style of Nikolai Timkov, who was one of the Honored Artists of the Russian Federation and one of the leading representatives of the Leningrad School of Painting, this picture has a special place in the Russian artistic movement of the time. In the halls of Saint Petersburg Union of Artists opened in 1993, the author exhibited it in the center of the exposure. The painting shows the Msta River bank near the village of Valentinovka where Timkov lived and worked in 1960–1990 years, and where as aptly noted by art historian Mark Etkind, it was a "primary landscape workshop" of Nikolai Timkov. Old poplars under the fluffy snow caps in the bluish frost passed as the epitome of beauty and grandeur of Russian nature. In the picture, perhaps for the first time so clearly and convincingly demonstrated new qualities in the artist's landscape painting - monumental imagery solutions, which arose after a trip a year ago in the Urals Region, as well as good spirits decorative and intensity of color. Another quality of the picture, which draws the attention of art historian Alexander Simuni in his article for the catalogue of the French exhibition of 1994, is a high professional skills what sets this work in the art of contemporary landscape painting.