No. 2, 2010
Mikhail Kazbekov
A TREASURE TROVE OF RUSSIAN MASTERPIECES
The Tretyakov State Gallery's unique collection comprises hundreds of thousands of masterpieces created over more than a thousand years. It is dedicated exclusively to native Russian art, and to the artists who made their own contribution to the history of Russian art or were closely associated with it. This was how the gallery was conceived by Pavel Tretyakov (1832-1898), and how it has continued to be down to the present day.
Leafing through the pages of the past
In 1856, Pavel Tretyakov, a young Moscow merchant of the First Guild, began to take a serious interest in building a collection of paintings. His first major acquisitions date from this time, and 1856 is generally considered to be the year of the Tretyakov Gallery's birth. Tretyakov decided to "collect the Russian school as it is, as it progresses."
On the southern bank of the Moskva River, right in the heart of town, The Moscow City Gallery opened to the general public in 1867. It contained 1,276 paintings, 10 sculptures, 471 drawings, and 84 pictures by foreign artists.
It was around this time that Pavel Tretyakov got the idea of creating a portrait gallery of "Russian writers, composers, and artistic figures in general." It was planned as a museum in a museum, a national portrait gallery in a "public repository of the fine arts, open to all." The collector himself ordered portraits from artists and took a keen interest in their work, thereby aiding the development of the genre. Many of the portraits of Perov, Repin, and Yaroshenko were painted, if not by the direct commission of Tretyakov, then with the intent of having them hung in his gallery within a gallery. The founder himself was thus one of the originators of the gallery's unique portrait collection.
Tretyakov was a man of excellent taste and discrimination, and many artists considered it an honor to sell him their canvases. Represented most fully in the collection are the Itinerants - artists who belonged to the Association of Itinerant Artistic Exhibitions and gravitated toward realistic depictions of Russian life. They exhibited their works in the provinces, introducing the people to fine art. It was at these itinerant exhibitions that Tretyakov acquired such masterpieces as Kramskoy's Christ in the Desert, Savrasov's The Rooks Return, and Ge's Peter the Great Questions Tsarevich Alexey at the Peterhof. Among the patron's other acquisitions were Pukirev's The Unequal Marriage, Perov's Rural Peasants' Easter Pilgrimage, Flavitskii's The Princess Tarakanova, Polenov's A Moscow Courtyard, Surikov's Morning of Streltsy's Execution, and many of Vereshchagin's works. The collector's last major acquisition was the famous canvas The Bogatyri, from the brush of Vasnetsov.
War and peace through the eyes of artists was an important theme of Tretyakov's collection. His most expensive acquisition (92,000 rubles), made in 1872, was a series of canvases by Vereshchagin, painted from materials on the Turkestan Campaign. Several pictures from Vereshchagin's Balkan series also found a place in Tretyakov's collection.
For Tretyakov, the painful and depressing events of 1881 - the death of Dostoevsky, Rubinstein, and Mussorgsky - were forgotten and replaced with joy when Surikov's Morning of Streltsy's Execution appeared at the 9th Itinerant Exhibition. Tretyakov was attracted by the powerful talent of the 33-year-old artist. That same year, Tretyakov decided to open the gallery to free admission: the "national art and history gallery" became a public gallery, and the collection was granted the status of a true museum. Legally, the gallery remained private, but anyone, "regardless of birth and rank," could visit there free of charge practically any day of the week. In August 1892, Tretyakov presented his collection as a gift to the city of Moscow. Until the day of his death, Tretyakov was an active collector and gave the gallery more than another 220 graphics and other works of Russian art.
In 1913, the Moscow City Duma made Igor Grabar, a well-known artist, art historian, and architect, custodian of the Tretyakov Gallery. His reforms with respect to the gallery transformed the Tretyakov State Gallery into a museum of European standard, in which exhibitions were arranged according to the chronological principle.
In June 1918, after the October coup, the Tretyakov Gallery was declared "state property of the Russian Federative Soviet Republic" and was officially dubbed the Tretyakov State Gallery.
In the years of Soviet power, the Tretyakov Gallery's exposition grew to such a size that the halls of the museum were unable to contain so many items. Construction work on a new building began in 1983. The gallery's depository, as its store of works of art is called, began operating two years later. It also holds a restoration workshop. The collection of 20th century art was relocated to a building on Krymsky Val, on the southwest side of Moscow's Garden Ring.
Unique Works by Russian Masters
The Tretyakov Gallery's collection today numbers more than 100,000 works, divided into several categories: Old Russian art of the 12th through 18th centuries, paintings of the 18th through the first half of the 19th century, and paintings of the second half of the 19th century and the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
A huge number of works by Russian painters and sculptors of the 18th through the 20th centuries are now on exhibit in the halls of the gallery, along with a large collection Old Russian art and graphic works.
A tour of the gallery's exhibits usually begins with the first hall of its second floor, in which hang portraits from the first half of the 18th century. In neighboring halls hang works by artists of the second half of the 18th century, including paintings by Rokotov, Levitsky, and Borovikovsky, and sculptures by Shubin.
In subsequent halls, visitors can see portraits by Kiprensky and landscapes by his contemporaries. Smaller halls contain works by Tropinin, Venetsianov, Fedotov, and their pupils and contemporaries.
Awaiting visitors farther down the line are works by Kuinji and members of the Academy of Arts, and the genre paintings of the Itinerants. A special place is allocated to the remarkable artist Ivan Kramskoy.
The art of the second half of the 20th century is represented brilliantly by the Realists (Klodt, Pryanishnikov, Pukirev, Flavitsky) and the great paintings of Perov, Vasiliev, Savrasov, and Aivazovsky. The halls devoted to Shishkin, Vasnetsov, Vereshchagin, and Repin (two rooms are given to his works), Surikov, and Ge are very popular with visitors.
A visit to the second floor of the Tretyakov Gallery ends with the recently renovated Vrubel and Rerikh halls. Vrubel's canvas The Daydream Princess is striking in its dimensions and deservedly crowns the collection.
A visit to the first floor begins with works by Levitan, Polenov, and other Realists of the late 19th century. Alongside these are works by painters of the Union of Russian Artists, sculptures from the turn of the century, and halls dedicated to Nesterov, Serov, Korovin, and Borisov-Musatov. Farther along are the World of Art and Blue Rose halls, featuring artists like Kustodiyev and Somov and Sapunov, Krymov, and others, respectively. At the far end of the floor is a suite of rooms housing the works of SergeyKonenkov.
Completing the tour, visitors can view an interesting collection of graphic works and look into the Treasure Trove, which houses priceless icons and other masterpieces of Old Rus'.
The museum's extension on Krymsky Val houses the permanent exhibition "Art of the 20th Century," at which visitors can become acquainted with the works of such geniuses as Deineka, Kandinsky, Filonov, Chagall, and others.
In the last fifty years, the Tretyakov Gallery has been transformed not only into an enormous museum known around the world but into a major academic and scientific center as well. Along with studying and popularizing the museum's treasures, it provides safe storage and restoration of works of art.
The Tretyakov Gallery has one of Russia's richest specialized libraries, numbering more than 200,000 volumes of books on art, along with a photo and slide library that is the only one of its kind. It is also equipped with the latest technology for restoring works of art.
The Tretyakov Gallery has successfully held a great many exhibitions both inside Russia and abroad.
Today, the Tretyakov Gallery has become one of the largest museums in Russia and the world. Most important, perhaps, is that in addition to its "official status" as a treasure trove of national art, it is truly a people's museum loved by millions.
