The Ural Mountains in the paintings of Russian artists

“Sweet green mountains! When I feel sad, I start thinking about my native green mountains and it seems to me that the sky is higher and clearer there and the people are so kind and I myself am getting better. Yes, I walk in those mountains again, I ascend stony steeps, go down into deep ravines, sit near mountain springs for a long time, breathe in wonderful mountain air, filled with aroma of mountain herbs and flowers and listen to the whispers of a hundred-year-old forest to no end…” So said Russian writer Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak about his native Ural mountains.

Ural is a “pantry” of Russia, in which there are enormous reserves of natural resources. Almost all the elements of Mendeleev’s table can be found there.

It’s no wonder that it is the Ural Mountains that have become one of the industrial centers and the most important metallurgical base of the country, where plants and factories have been mushrooming since the early 18th century. The local industry played a major part in helping Russia emerge victorious from the dozens of wars and conflicts in which it has been involved.

Ballad. The Urals, 1897

Apollinariy Vasnetsov/Odesa Fine Arts Museum/

Lake in the mountainous Bashkiria. Ural. 1895

Apollinariy Vasnetsov/The State Russian Museum

Mountain Lake. The Urals, 1892

Apollinariy Vasnetsov

October in the Urals, 1894.

Alexei Denisov-Uralsky

At the half-station. A winter morning at the Ural Railway, 1891

Vladimir Kazantsev

The Taiga in the Urals. Blue Mountain, 1891

Apollinariy Vasnetsov/The State Tretyakov Gallery

Night. The Urals

Apollinariy Vasnetsov

The Ural Landscape, 1930

Apollinariy Vasnetsov/Nizhniy Tagil Museum of Fine Arts

In the Urals, 1888

Vladimir Kazantsev/Irkutsk V.P. Sukachev Regional Museum of Fine Arts

Fetching Workers at the Urals Factory, 1820

Georgy Savitsky/The State Historical Museum

The Ural Landscape, 1890-1891

Apollinariy Vasnetsov/The State Tretyakov Gallery

The Ural Mining Plant, 1837

Vasily Rayev/Kunstkamera

The Forest on Mount Blagodat. The Middle Urals, 1890s.

Apollinariy Vasnetsov/The State Tretyakov Gallery

At the Old Ural Plant, 1937

Boris Johansson/The State Tretyakov Gallery/Pavel Balabanov/Sputnik

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