In a gilded engaged frame is a half-length portrait of Yevpraksiya Olovyanishnikova enclosed in an oval. On the back is a handwritten inscription in five lines: “Yaroslavl Tomilov S. V. / Portrait of Yevpraksiya / Georgievna / Olovyanishnikova” / canvas oil 60×50 2005” Sergey Vasilyevich Tomilov, an artist and icon painter from St. Petersburg, created the painting. Tomilov graduated from the Academy of Arts. At the beginning of his art career, he painted portraits, and in the 1990s he began to create analogion icons, painted iconostases, and later focused on wall painting.
Yevpraksiya Georgievna Olovyanishnikova was the daughter of the Yaroslavl merchant Georgiy Goroshkov. She married the merchant Ivan Porfirievich Olovyanishnikov, by whom she had ten children. Having widowed at the age of 47, she bought the bell factory from the heirs of her husband’s brother, Sergey, and in 1901, transformed it into a closed joint-stock company “Olovyanishnikova and Sons” with a stated capital of 1.5 million rubles. Olovyanishnikova became its Chairman of the Board. The Olovyanishnikovs’ enterprise included a bell foundry, a lead and whitewash plant, a paint-grinding factory, and numerous trading establishments. Yevpraksiya Olovyanishnikova engaged a famous artist Sergey Ivanovich Vashkov to work in the company. In 1911, Olovyanishnikova’s company became a supplier to the court of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. The interests of Olovyanishnikova were not confined to business. She kept track of book novelties, subscribed to newspapers and magazines, and for years bought a season ticket in a box at the Bolshoi Theater.
Yevpraksiya Olovyanishnikova donated extensively to
churches and monasteries, in particular to the Church of the Trinity in Gryazy,
where her husband and then her son Victor were the churchwardens. An almshouse
was set up and maintained at her expense in Vlasyevsky parish in Yaroslavl. She
provided gold-embroidered products from her factory for the
Serafimo-Ponetaevsky Convent, a major center of religious arts and crafts. In
1907, Yevpraksiya Olovyanishnikova donated land and buildings on Poshekhonskaya
Street to the city of Yaroslavl, intended for a specialized children’s hospital
for infectious diseases, the first in the city. Olovyanishnikova is buried at
the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
