Sergei Ivanovich Vasilkovsky and the fate of his artistic heritage
With an aspiration to leave a significant part of the heritage in native land, S. Vasilkovsky made an appropriate will, according to which all original works he kept came up to an indivisible fund and should be stored in this form. In 1917, Vasilkovsky, according to his will, passed 1348 works to the collection of Kharkiv City Art and Industry Museum. By passing pictures Vasilkovsky personally made up inventory by numbering all works. Unfortunately the inventory as well as an archive of the artist went all to pieces during World War II and to find out what works were passed personally by Vasilkovsky, is only possible via old museum lists and numbers, which the author put down on the front or back of the work. Some part of works has been lost or taken abroad during the Civil War 1917 – 1920's. A plan of museums nationalization, previously announced by the Soviet authorities in Russia, came into force after the final determination of the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine. Herein most works of Vasilkovsky remained in Ukraine and precisely in Kharkiv. Not yet formed system of new principles of museumification led to frequent transfers of individual works and entire collections. Significant losses, incurred during World War II, appeared to be irreparable. Valuable artifacts and even catalogs were annihilated or taken by German forces and their allies in Europe, some parts were lost during the evacuation. The postwar period conducted with a restore hard work of museums and their collections. Museum workers had to recatalog the collection, and non-qualified personnel could only write records of the name, the estimated size of the work and the author's name in cards. As a result, the process of cataloging could still be considered as not completed yet. When working with archival materials and even with careful visual examination of museum work, new aspects are constantly opening up that relate to the history of the collections as well as to individual works. For this reason, the study of the fate of S.I. Vasilkovsky artistic heritage, including works that are in private collections, is still in progress, including the author's presented article.