Article:
EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS
Magazine issue:
#3 2011 (32)
I came across the idea of this article by sheer chance, when a group of reporters from Grozny “descended” upon the Tretyakov Gallery. Unprepared, I was to give an interview about the art of Pyotr Zakharov-Chechenets. In the introductory room, my attention was caught by an old photograph featuring the interior of the gallery in 1898, which showed that Zakharov-Chechenets’s portraits fitted in perfectly with those hanging beside them, including masterpieces of Russian art of the 1830s-1840s by Karl Briullov and Fyodor Brum. Almost all of his best works in the collection were purchased by Pavel Tretyakov. What was it that attracted the demanding collector? Images of the people who were “dear to the nation’s heart”? Or the quality of the artist’s craftsmanship? How, and under what circumstances, were his paintings acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery? Looking for answers, I researched at the department of manuscripts of the Tretyakov Gallery, and in the newspaper and dissertation departments of the Russian National Library.
I came across the idea of this article by sheer chance, when a group of reporters from Grozny “descended” upon the Tretyakov Gallery. Unprepared, I was to give an interview about the art of Pyotr Zakharov-Chechenets. In the introductory room, my attention was caught by an old photograph featuring the interior of the gallery in 1898, which showed that Zakharov-Chechenets’s portraits fitted in perfectly with those hanging beside them, including masterpieces of Russian art of the 1830s-1840s by Karl Briullov and Fyodor Brum.
