Встречи с художниками

"My meetings with artists belong to three periods: firstly, my life in Yasnaya Polyana as Leo Tolstoy's personal secretary (1910), secondly, my work as director of the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Moscow (1916-1923) and, thirdly, work as director of the Russian Cultural and Historical Museum in Prague-Zbraslav, including a trip to Paris for paintings (1934-1941).
The best examples of painting and sculpture , collected by me abroad, were transported to the USSR in 1948 and distributed among Moscow museums.
I must say that I valued the works of our outstanding artists as much as personal meetings with masters of art.
Among the names well known to every art historian, in my memoirs there is only one thing known only to visitors to Yasnaya Polyana and other museums of Leo Tolstoy: this is Sergey Nikolaevich Saltanov.I raise the question of revising and reassessing the artistic heritage of this talented and original landscape painter, whom to call Yasnaya Polyana Levitan".

Valentin Bulgakov