150th ANNIVERSARY OF TRETYAKOV GALLERY

Dina Lavrova, Irina Lomakina
Philanthropy and Patronage New Additions to the Collection

#4 2006 (13)

The history of the Tretyakov Gallery continues in its ongoing acquisitions, currently made using the resources of private individuals and companies, as well as the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, and the Tretyakov Gallery’s own funds. The subject of building up the museum's collection from individual donations and through implementation of the state purchasing policy was first touched upon in the #1-2005 issue of the “Tretyakov Gallery magazine”. This article elaborates on the topic, telling about various first-rate works of art acquired for the collection – it focuses only on the last five years, highlighting works of Old Russian art, old masters’ paintings and drawings, archival materials, and objects of applied art, modern sculpture and paintings.

Yekaterina Khokhlova
The Descendants: Destinies and Memory

#3 2006 (12)

One of the most significant events during the recent celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery was the arrival in Moscow of Pavel Tretyakov's descendants living in the United States. Thanks to the efforts of the gallery's employees and officials, who had found the Ziloti family and made their visit to Russia possible, for the first time in history the gallery became a meeting place for those who belong to the once numerous family that used to reside in the Tretyakov house in Tolmachi.

Natalya Alexandrova
Gifts for the Next 150 Years

#3 2006 (12)

The anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery was accompanied not only by exhibitions and gala celebrations but also by numerous presents from public and state organizations, as well as from individuals and artists which supplemented the museum’s collection with fine works of Russian art.

Marina Elzesser
Anniversary Chronicle

#3 2006 (12)

In May 2006 the Tretyakov Gallery celebrated the 150th anniversary of its foundation. It is no accident that the history of the museum is regarded as having started in 1856 when Pavel Tretyakov first began to buy paintings by Russian artists, and not 1881 when the gallery was opened to the public, or 1892 when the Tretyakov brothers’ collections were given to the city of Moscow. The reality is that, before starting his collection, Pavel Tretyakov had conceived it not as a private collection appealing to his personal taste but as an “artistic museum”, a “… public repository of fine arts accessible to everyone, a source of use for many, a pleasure for all”. That is why Tretyakov himself – and after his death, the gallery’s Board of Trustees – confidently marked 1856 as the beginning of the first Russian national fine arts museum.

Galina Churak
Pavel Tretyakov and His Gallery

#2 2006 (11)

"He alone maintained the whole school of Russian painting. An unprecedented and grandiose deed!" In such words the Russian painter Ilya Repin expressed both his own attitude and that of his contemporaries towards the collecting activity of Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. For more than 100 years the Gallery has proudly, and gratefully, born the name of its founder, who turned the institution into a prominent cultural monument to Russian art that has been appreciated by many generations.

Irina Lebedeva
20th-century Art in the Tretyakov Gallery

#2 2006 (11)

The Tretyakov Gallery is one of the major museums of national art in Russia. Evolving from a private collection, today it boasts an art collection unique in its characteristics, diversity and scope. Its significance and its place in the contemporary art scene is defined by its special mission, one that combines two very important functions. One of them is traditional – to preserve, study and popularize the vast pool of works of Russian art of the 12th-20th centuries, assembled during the 150 years of the museum’s existence. Another function, a very important one today, is to address topical issues of the contemporary art scene.

Galina Andreeva
Congratulate the Tretyakov Gallery on its 150th Anniversary

#2 2006 (11)

A major event marking the 150th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery which opens in the gallery on 24 May 2006, the exhibition “Russian Museums Congratulate the Tretyakov Gallery on its 150th Anniversary” collects works from the gallery’s long-term partners and friends. Co-sponsorship of the project was provided by the Severstal Group and Anatoly Novikov.

Yekaterina Selezneva
Pavel Tretyakov and the Paris World Fairof 1878

#1 2006 (10)

It is believed that Pavel Tretyakov generously lent his paintings to exhibitions, including foreign ones, a belief started by Vasily Stasov, who wrote: “… when told about the new World fair he opened the doors of his wonderful gallery and let them take what they wanted.” The reality was far more complex.

Ksenia Antonova
From an Inventory to a Multi-volume Catalogue

#1 2006 (10)

The next volume of the Tretyakov Gallery’s comprehensive catalogue devoted to early 19th-century painting is scheduled to appear in the nearest future. Even today, in the context of swiftly developing electronic means of collecting and storing information, the book is a major event. It is a fundamental illustrated edition with full and detailed information about painters and their works, and it will certainly attract the attention of both experts and a wider general readership of art lovers.

Elena Terkel
Pavel Tretyakov’s Last Will and Testament: The Story of an Error

#4 2005 (09)

4 December 1898 was a sad day for the whole of Russia, not least for its cultural and intellectual circles: Pavel Tretyakov died at ten o’clock that morning. Reactions to the news brought grief not only from his family, but also from many Russian people. An endless flow of condolences, flowers and wreaths arrived at the Tretyakov house. When the funeral was over, the time came for the reading of the will of the deceased. But it turned out that brought up unexpected complications, as Yevdokia Konstantinovna Dmitrieva, Pavel Tretyakov’s niece, recalled: “First, it took a long time to find the will! And when it was found at last, stuck under one of the drawers in the writing desk, and handed over to a most respected Moscow solicitor, Mikhail Petrovich Minin, he, almost at once, found a major mistake in its text … It made it not only impossible for the Moscow district court to legalize the document, but practically declared it invalid. The family were shocked!”

Natalia Priimak
Pavel Tretyakov's Date and Place of Birth

#3 2005 (08)

The family of Russian merchants from whom Pavel Tretyakov was descended had no long-term roots in Moscow. It was only in 1774 that the family moved to Moscow from Maly Yaroslavets, a small town near Kaluga where the Tretyakovs had long been known as merchants. In 1832, the founder of the world famous Tretyakov Gallery and Honorary Citizen of Moscow – a title accorded to very few at the end of the 19th century – was born in the old part of Moscow’s Zamoskvorechye area, in Yakimanka in the parish of St Nicholas’ Church in Golutvino, the first child in the family of Mikhail Tretyakov and the first representative of the fourth generation of the Tretyakov family.

Olga Atroshchenko
The Beginning of the Collection: Pavel Tretyakov’s First Acquisition

#3 2005 (08)

In 1856, the young collector Pavel Tretyakov purchased his very first painting – Vasily Khudyakov’s “Armed Clash with Finnish Smugglers”.

Louisa Bayura
Vasily Khudyakov in the Ulyanovsk Regional Arts Museum

#3 2005 (08)

Vasily Khudyakov (1826-1871) was famous in the 1860s as a genre painter, the author of excellent portraits and historical paintings, and a brilliant graphic artist. A former serf, he became the only painter from the small Volga merchant town of Simbirsk to be awarded the honorary titles of Academician and Professor of St. Petersburg's Academy of Arts in the mid-19th century.

 

 

Lydia Gladkova
Through the Optical Glass of Artistic Expertise

#2 2005 (07)

Artistic expertise and authentication have recently become a matter of great relevance in the world art-istic community and in art marketing practices, the subject of heated debate initiated by art experts, dealers, collectors and critics, and also the majority of art consumers – namely, the general public at large, whose opinion, however dilettante in its nature, cannot be ignored. The arguments have reached an extreme level, both verbally and in the press, as the question of whether museum artistic expertise is admissible and necessary to cater for dealers, private galleries, individual collectors and auction houses. Some think such a task ought to be carried out by independent experts and/or scientific research centres which possess the most advanced technical devices, and are licensed to authorize the authentication of works of art.

Dina Lavrova, Irina Lomakina
Acquisitions over the Last Decade

#1 2005 (06)

The central mission of the Tretyakov Gallery today remains undoubtedly its role as a treasury and promoter of Russian art. Still, another task – that of growing and updating the collection – is no less important. Purchasing new works, or acquiring them by other lawful means, keeps the museum's employees both restless and resourceful.

 

 

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