165 YEARS SINCE THE SIGNING OF THE TREATY OF AIGUN

The painting "The Treaty of Aigun" was created by the honored artist of Russia Vasily Evtropovich Romanov in 1947 in Blagoveshchensk.

The artist turned to the most important event in the history of the Russian Far East - the signing of the Treaty of Aigun on May 28, 1858, which defined the border between the two empires: Russian and Daqing (present-day China).

According to the treaty "the left bank of the Amur River from the Argun River to the sea mouth of the Amur River" was the possession of Russia; and "the right bank, counting downstream to the Ussuri River" was the possession of the Daikin Empire.

The characters in Romanov's painting were the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov, the initiator of the Russian-Chinese negotiations, and the first archbishop of Kamchatka, ethnographer, linguist, and one of the famous spiritual pastors in the Far East, Innocent Veniaminov.

Grigory Stepanovich Novikov-Daursky, an employee of the Blagoveshchensk Museum of Regional Studies and "the patriarch of Amur local history" was the first to express his opinion about the work done by the artist: "I didn't expect something like this. This is a serious work, expressive and authentic. I hope that the picture will arouse a slumbering feeling of gratitude to our distant and courageous ancestors in people's hearts...".

In 1960, the art canvas was given to the Khabarovsk Museum of Local Lore. It took its rightful place in one of the exhibition halls devoted to the history of reclamation of the Amur Region from the middle of the 19th century to the early 20th century.

With the memories of the artist V.E. Romanov about the history of the painting you can get acquainted  here