Pond

Pond (1912) by Stanislav Zhukovsky

The postal service have decided to add an other mark to this card by putting it through their rubbing machine. Do they have a special machine to randomly mark cards?  Feckless.  Perhaps I should get out my brushes and colour in the water and reflection except I don't have the talent of the impressionist landscape artist Stanislav Zhukovsky (1875-1944).  He did not have a good time with the people in charge either as his fondness for lavish things made him suspect to the Bolsheviks so in 1923 he moved to Poland.  Maybe not the best of moves because during the German occupation of Poland in World War Two he was arrested by the Nazis and held in a transit camp at Pruszhow where he died in 1944.

Zhukovsky was born in Yendrikovtsy, Grodno Province of the then Russian Empire, now it is Belarus.   A collection of his "Russian Period" works are on display at the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus in Minsk. They had their own troubles with the Nazis as large parts of the collection were plundered and disappeared during WW2 however, as they put it, they have risen from the ashes and the present day collection continues to grow.  Apart from its little museum stamp the card came with

the 2013 History of  National Communication stamp.  The stamp features a dove symbolising the "elements of protection" and the other pieces featured in the design are philatelic items from the collection of Lev L. Kolosov . 

The stamp is one of series started in 2011 by the Communications Administrators, members of the RCC (Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communication), who signed an agreement on issuing postage stamps on a RCC theme. The stamps display the RCC emblem.   Its aim is to develop cultural, social and economic cooperation between states and to consolidate friendship between their people.  For the first issue in 2011 they celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the RCC, then in 2012 Belarus National Clothes.