A Report

“The Tretyakov Gallery”

The introduction

The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow is a major world-famous collection of Russian graphic arts. The quiet Lavrushinsky Pereulok, a by-street across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, with the familiar building of the Tretyakov Gallery behind a wrought-iron fence, is frequented by both Muscovites and visitors to the capital. The Tretyakov Gallery firmly imbeds itself in the Russian’s intellectual life from their very early teens. Here, exposed to canvases by Russia’s foremost painters, people first awakened to an appreciation of art, to its message and emotional impact. The Tretyakov Gallery has become what can be described as a “popular” museum, with long lines of people queuing to get in.russians are ardent devotees of art, and Russian museums attract the world’s largest crowds. The distinction of the Tretyakov Gallery is well known outside the Russia - foreign visitors from many countries of the world make it a point to include the Tretyakov Gallery into their Moscow schedule.

The basic part

The Tretyakov Gallery is in many ways a unique museum. Its paintings reflect the varied life-styles and intellectual spectrum of the Russian people throughout the many centuries of their history.

The Gallery was founded by Pavel Tretyakov (1839-1889), a Russian merchant and industrialist. A patriot and patron of the arts, he conceived of Russia’s first museum of national Russian art back in the 1850’s. Tretyakov wrote in 1860: “Being a man sincerely and faithfully fond of the art of painting I have a lifelong wish to start a public and easily accessible treasury of fine arts, one that will be useful to many and enjoyable to all”. For more than thirty years Tretyakov persistently worked to make his ambition come true. His earliest acquisition of Russian paintings dates back to 1856, the year when the Gallery was formally founded, and included two paintings - a small socio-moralistic canvas in the style of P. Fedotov - Temptation by N. Shilder, and V. Khudyakov’s romanticized battle-scene Clash with Finnish Contraband Smugglers. Subsequently both paintings were recognized as the best accomplishments by the two mid-19th-century painters, who are hardly known today, but who in their own time, were the young collector’s peers and contemporaries. In 1892, when Pavel Tretyakov formally donated his collection to the city of Moscow, it included about two thousand paintings by all the noteworthy Russian artists of the 19th century and some of the 18th century. It was a genuine museum of national art, its best specimens reflecting in faithful detail both its past and its present.

The Museum was laid out in a gallery specifically constructed for the purpose - a U-like structure around the Tretyakov’s living quarters in Lavrushinsky Pereulok. Since the early 1870’s the museum, even then known as the Tretyakov Gallery, has been open to visitors, irrespective of their origin or social standing. With every passing decade the Gallery’s fame and popularity constantly grew. Until Tretyakov’s decision in 1892 to donate his gallery to the city of Moscow was enthusiastically welcomed by the Russian public. At the same time it was universally recognized that the decision had not come as any big surprise. Tretyakov, who remained a lifetime trustee of the Gallery, indefatigably sought new additions.

The Gallery continued to grow under Tretyakov’s successors. Between 1892 and 1917, when the October Revolution took place, the Gallery almost doubled its stock.

An important highlight in the pre-revolutionary history of the Gallery was the addition of new halls and the partial remodeling of the old ones. In 1902-04 the original halls built in Tretyakov’s time were complemented by his rebuilt living quarters, while the entire set of structures received a common facade in the Old Russian style which exists even now and was designed by the artist Victor Vasnetsov, a great friend and admirer of Tretyakov.

Following the October Revolution of 1917 the stock of the Gallery and its formal status was changed. On June 3, 1918, Lenin signed a “Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars to Nationalize the Tretyakov Gallery" making its national rather than municipal property. Under Lenin’s Decree the Gallery was to bear the name of Tretyakov, its founder.

The Gallery rapidly began to build up its stock. It was replenished by number of private collections and paintings from the deserted mansions and country estates. As a result of the centralization and restructuring of museum collections of the mid-20’s the Gallery came into the possession of many important works of Russian art from the reorganized small museums such as the Rumyantsev Museum, the Ostroukhov Museum of Icons and Painting, and the Tsvetkov Gallery. For example, A. Ivanov’s famous painting The Appearance of Christ to the People came from the Rumyantsev Museum, a first rate collection of old Russian icons came from the Ostroukhov Museum. A large collection of Russian drawings and watercolours came from the Tsvetkov Gallery. At the same time the Tretyakov Gallery parted with West-European painters’ works that had come to the Gallery from the collections of Tretyakov and Morozov: these paintings were made available to the specialized museums.

As a result between 1917 and the early 30’s the Tretyakov Gallery’s collection grew 4 to 5 times. 50 years later, by the late 1970’s it had tripled and amounted to 60 thousand exhibits. Now the collection reflects the history of ethnic Russian art in all its forms - painting, sculpture and drawing. This work is about the paintings section of the collection, which traditionally remains the most comprehensive and attractive.

Let’s start with a few samples of what can truly be regarded as a unique collection of 11th-17th century Russian painting. ............