P.M. Tretyakov

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.

Founded at the end of the 19 th century by the Moscow merchants and art-collectors Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov, Russia’s largest museum of national art has became a symbol of the country’s consciousness and culture. Pavel Mikhailovich (1832-1898), the elder brother, remains much better-known than his younger sibling, and the Tretyakov Gallery directly owes its existence to him. Pavel Tretyakov made a promise to himself to establish in his native city “a National Gallery, in other words a gallery containing the works of Russian artists”[1] and worked relentlessly toward that goal all his life. He passed on his enthusiasm to his younger brother, Sergei Mikhailovich (1834-1892), who became one of the outstanding collectors of his era, assembling an unique collection of 19th century European paintings. In 1892, Pavel bequeathed to the city of Moscow both his own and his brother’s collections. It was an extraordinary precedent in the history of Russian philanthropy, and the united collection was officially named the “Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov City Gallery of Art”, becoming the nation’s major museum of the era.

The name of Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov (1834-1892) is not well-known, even though his collection of Western European works of art was the origin of the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. More often, his name is recalled only in connection with that of his elder brother Pavel. Yet, during the Tretyakov brothers’ lifetime, Sergei enjoyed more fame than his brother. At that time, Pavel - the owner of Moscow’s renowned art gallery - introduced himself to fellow citizens as “the Mayor’s brother”. When one brother was mentioned, another was also present on the scene, albeit invisible. Throughout their lives, Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov supported and advised each other. The brothers shared common interests and did much work for the benefit of their country. It is possible to say that they “walked along the path of life hand in hand” - so much was shared in common - yet each one of them left his own imprint on the history of Russian art and of their home town.

The Tretyakov Gallery has a major collection of paintings by Sylvestr Shchedrin (1791-1830), one of the most endearing Russian landscape artists of the first third of the 19th century. In 1800 he was accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied in Mikhail Ivanov’s workshop. Awarded in 1811 a Big Gold Medal for his “graduation paintings”, he was a recipient of an academic fellowship for study abroad, and in 1818 he went to Rome, the city widely recognized as the capital of European art. It was in Italy that his talent would blossom.

The epochal exhibition “Russia and the Arts: The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky” runs at London’s National Portrait Gallery until June 26, bringing the pride of Russia’s 19th-century cultural pantheon to the UK. Its British curator Rosalind P. Blakesley recalls the origins, development and ambitions of this major Anglo-Russian cultural collaboration.