Ilya Repin

A special event in memory of Pavel Tretyakov was held on December 15 2008 in the Tretyakov Gallery, honoring, according to tradition, the most senior museum employees. Organized by the Pavel Tretyakov Charitable Foundation, the event’s date marked two notable anniversaries: the 110th anniversary of the death of Pavel Tretyakov, the founder of the Gallery, and the 125 th anniversary of the death of the writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. Dedicated to the Tretyakov family and the great Russian writer Ivan Turgenev this event gave an opportunity to turn to Russian literature, an important part of the Tretyakov family’s cultural world.

At the beginning of autumn 1890, my grandfather, Alexander Vladimirovich Zhirkevich, a military attorney and a beginning writer, came to the resort town of Yalta for treatment. As was customary in those days, he stayed there for a while. Treatment alone was not enough for his vivacious nature; he was curious to see various places of interest in the Crimea. He admired Ai-Petri Mountain, delighted in the sea views (“Will I see you again, charming land?”), and spent a day in Sevastopol. He would visit Sevastopol again soon, with his young wife Katya, who had come from Vilna to join him. By then he and Katya had been happily married for two years and they had a little son named Seryozha4, whom they lovingly called “Gulya” at home.

When in 1839 the world learned about the invention of photography, most artists did not think long before they recognized it as a purely scientific discovery. Few, if any, thought that photography would have an impact on the art of painting. Although the first photographs were the result of the collaboration between a scientist and an artist, and later many professional painters became photographers, and photography significantly influenced the art of painting, for a long time the artistic community was “opposed” to photography. However, if we look back at the state of painting prior to 1839, we can see a whole range of developments that seem to have broken the ground for the emergence of the new art.