Paintings with meticulously crafted lace, strict formal poses, and slightly naive gazes - the heroes of this exhibition seem to have stepped out of family albums from the 19th century. Here, portraits that have long remained in the shadow of 'scientific art' are now revealed to the viewer after painstaking restoration. At the center of the project is the painting of masters who did not complete a full academic course. Their works sometimes imitate metropolitan examples, sometimes argue with them, but always retain a recognizable character: a slightly rigid drawing, bold color schemes, and attention to gestures and details of everyday life. The viewer seems to move from the 'center' to the 'peripheries' of artistic life, observing how the language of the portrait changes as it moves away from strict academic canons. A separate line of the exhibition is the history of restoration. It is the work of specialists that allowed for the removal of late inscriptions, returning the authors' authentic voice and showing how lively and diverse provincial painting can be. Many canvases had not been exhibited before and existed only as inventory numbers, hidden under layers of varnish and foreign brushes. A total of about 80 works from the first half of the 19th century are presented. Venue - Hall No. 104 in the Manege of the Small Hermitage. The poster for St. Petersburg is available on KUDAGO.