We attracted a new, modern, the page of their history - both of these estates passed to the long-term leases to private individuals, and revive them almost from the ruins. It is known that the fate of the "noble nests" under the Soviet regime was unenviable, many were destroyed or are in ruins. Now, some of them again are private family homes and corporate residences, become available to the public hotel or cultural centers.
     But where is the owners - they come and visit. The essence of our project is that artists are being made to residents of the estate, rather than short-lived, though interested, visitors. They do not stand behind a fence with a sketchbook, do not enter the gate each day to find a good look. In the morning they saw the front yard of the window, catching the dawn light effects on the white stone portico, hiding from the hot sun in the shade of the colonnade, and at night hear the crickets chirping and trying to convey the effects of moonlight.
        We were lucky with the site of the first plein air. Manor Znamenskoye-Rusk - an architectural masterpiece of the Russian architect Nikolai Lvov, known for its majestic colonnade that surrounds the front yard field oval in front of the main manor house. I was lucky and the season: early July - is the highest point of the peak of nature, a time when "the dawn of a hurry to change the other, giving the night half an hour." If the protagonists of the July plein air were natural allies - the architecture and the sun, the open air in October, on the contrary, the bright autumn nature competed with the creation of human hands. And judging by the sketches, won. The motto of the plein air in Serednikovo could be a cry from a poem by Ivan Bunin, "Oh, the joy of color ...."
         Manor Serednikovo - "Moscow" with well-preserved outbuildings. Its architectural composition is typical - a main house with a portico, a colonnade surrounding kurdoner (front yard), residential outbuildings, where guests gain shelter. Located close to town, it does not strike the grandeur and size - Chamber home furnishings helped artists. A joy to see the evening lights are lit in the windows of the lodge, where you will come to warm up, have dinner, wash your hands and relax until the next cold windy morning.
       Such is a brief history of Manor while open-air National Fund «Revival of Russian manor." Before we had a few problems. The first - a pictorial evidence of the current state of private estates. This is important in an era of gradual transition from the recent decline in bylomu (and future) well-being. The second - to try to understand "the system last era", expressed in architectural forms. Finally, our work - this is the memory of the estate landscape genre in Russian art, a genre virtually disappeared, but perhaps renascent.
        We express our deep gratitude to the owners of estates - Vladimir Mikhailovich Kononov Mikhail Lermontov and by giving us the opportunity to approach these challenges.