The Vasilievka estate (Volchansk district)

Vasilievka is an estate in the Volchansk district of the Kharkov province. It formerly belonged to the noble Bekaryukov family and, in 1915, to E. A. Delarue. On Olga Delarue, the wife of Georges d'Horrer, and her family, see the page "Georges d'Horrer and Olga Delarue".

Below is the description of the estate from Georgy Lukomsky's book Old Country Houses of the Kharkov Province (Petrograd, 1917), with photographs of the estate taken in 1915¹.

Georgy Lukomsky's description (1917)

Vasilievka, an estate formerly of the Bekaryukovs, now of E. A. Delarue. The house and the outbuildings stand on the top of a hill above the village, so that, as you approach the estate, not only can you not see the garden, but it is even hard to imagine where it could be. Behind the house there is a slope, and on it spreads an old, wonderful garden with avenues of lime trees. Once past the village, a rather dreary one, you can see the whole estate from afar: in the middle, a low house, but with a portico and of imposing architecture, and in front of it, on either side, the service wings stretch forward, they too adorned with pillars and even columns. All around, bare country, the red, naked slopes of hills washed away by the rains. Wretched, gnawed willows by the stream.

Driving into the vast courtyard, which has the character of a farmyard rather than the look of a cour d'honneur, you at once feel the true life of a country estate. In this sense Vasilievka is more typical than Grafskoye or Khoten. Bezdrik is an estate of the same character: on the side of the drive, the whole farm; on the opposite side of the house, the park and the pleasures of life.

At Vasilievka the features of these two sides of estate life are brilliantly expressed. Everything to do with business is concentrated in front of the main entrance. Here the façade is adorned with a loggia, very convenient for the landowner to receive his peasants; in front of the portico stand very charming and curious lanterns on posts, set well forward. From the steps all the outbuildings can be seen: the farm is, so to speak, under the watchful eye of the landowner.

Between two projections richly decorated on their ends (deliberately left without windows, so as to give room to sumptuous stucco work), there is a semicircular rotunda of six columns, covered by a dome of a beautiful outline. From the rotunda two staircases descend, curving along the base. The columns are of an excellent order. The cornice is full of overly bold, steep modillions in relief, but here, against the plain wall, one understands the master's aim: to give a rich, crowning "accent".

Although all the dimensions of the house are very small, the proportions are well chosen, and the rotunda, tactfully placed, does not at all seem "squeezed in" by the wings. The windows are boldly cut and separated from the walls only by their rusticated lintels.

Quite unique is the treatment of the walls on the projections. Here the lower, rusticated part of the wall opens in the middle to make room for a flat niche, into which another, delicately cut niche is set, with stucco work inside it. The stucco shows an altar topped by a vase entwined by a serpent. The relation of the smooth, high base to the field of rustication, of the radius of the arch to the size of the whole wall, and finally the scale of the bas-relief, reveal the unquestionable hand of a first-rate master in the building. Shaggy, dark firs, though not very old, charmingly set off the delicacy of the architectural decoration.

The decoration of the drawing room is especially rich: here a straight arch is carried by Ionic columns. The cornice has a correct profile. The furniture of the room is typical of the 1850s (though there are individual older pieces: chests of drawers, pier glasses, chiffoniers, clocks, vases, candelabra). The portraits are fine and typical, for example those of E. E. Vremeva and V. I. Schröter. Especially fine is the portrait that captures the somewhat full but slender, "moulded" form of a young woman (with what love, with what relish the hand "with its round, glossy elbow" is painted, how carefully the roses are drawn).

The costumes of the young women, the light muslin, the velvet ribbon, the hairstyles: how typical all this is, and what rich material for today's researchers, painters and stage directors! And there is an enormous number of such portraits on the estates of Vasilievka, Burluk and others.

The stoves in the house are especially fine: tall, typical of the 1820s, that is, of the time when the house itself was built. In the study, a stove of simple form, but richly adorned with ornamental bands. The stove in the boudoir, on the contrary, is delightful in its rich outline. It has the shape of a finely fluted column with a vase set on top. The pedestal, broad and rich, is decorated with ornament running along the semicircles and with garlands on the sides, typical of the Louis XVI style. Seeing these stoves, perhaps installed as early as the end of the 18th century, one asks oneself: where was the factory that made such wonderful "articles", full of great architectural taste and tact? Were there stove workshops at the porcelain and faience factories? Who were the artists who supplied the designs, which craftsmen made them, where were these establishments and to whom did they belong, these nurseries of true art whose works still adorn many old houses and have even been honoured with a move to museums?

Across the whole vast expanse of Russia, in Vologda and in Kostroma, Smolensk, Kiev, and in the backwoods of the Kharkov province, one often comes across stoves of the time of Catherine II and Alexander I that seem alike: white, tiled, in the Louis XVI and Empire styles.