Yesterday I visited the Penates - the house of Russian painter Ilya Repin. It stands surrounded by pine forest, and the Bay of Finland is a 5 minute walk from the house.
The wooden house is very Russian style with little roofs and multiple terraces and enamel fireplaces in every room. There's a large studio on the second floor with large windows and skylights to allow as much natural light in as possible.
Repin was a very prolific painter and a huge name in his day, but also a bit of an eccentric. He always slept in a small unheated terrace, even through the winter. Him and his wife were vegetarian and practiced no-help dinner parties (with no servants at the door or the table). His weekly dinner parties on Wednesdays were attended by a multitude of artists, musicians, scientists. He was friends with Gorky, Mayakovsky, Chukovsky, Tolstoy, Yesenin etc. etc.
(Last picture: Ilya Repin paints opera singer Fyodor Shalyapin in his studio, 1914.)