The Hermitage and Famous Russian Collectors
Art Gallery of Lipetsk Region. Lipetsk
13 October 2009 - 28 February 2010
103 exhibits

The exhibition in the Art Gallery of Lipetsk Region is dedicated to three famous collections of Western European Art. Diverse in character and different in their history of origin all of them made a significant contribution to formation of the State Hermitage collections.

Twenty five pictorial canvases of the 17th - 19th centuries and approximately sixty articles of applied art from the 12th till 19th centuries became a part of the exhibition. Among them there are such masterpieces as Portrait of a Commander by Jan Veniks, Portrait of a Young Woman by Godfriend Schalken. The painting by D. Tivart Girls Decorating a Tomb, which has just undergone restoration, has left the Hermitage and was sent to the exhibition for the first time.

This is the fourth in succession exhibition organized by the State Hermitage in Lipetsk. Holding of the exhibition in Lipetsk is also even more interesting since there is a family estate of noblemen Semyonovs in village Urusovo (Lipetsk region), where Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky was born and spent his childhood years.

Portrait gallery of Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky (1827-1914) arrived to the Hermitage in 1914. Outstanding traveller, scientist and senator, he was famous first of all for his geographic discoveries. But collecting of paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists, contemporaries of Rembrandt, had become his favourite flame since the middle of 1860s. His collection was immensely diverse in its genre composition and included, in a greater degree, works of little-known artists popular in the 17th century. The gallery of Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky was planned as addition to the Dutch collection of the Imperial Hermitage where it arrived after the owner’s death.

Collection of Prince Alexander Gorchakov (1798-1883), a lyceum friend of Alexander Pushkin, a brilliant diplomat and the last state chancellor in the history of Russia, had a different destiny. Spending most of his time abroad Alexander Gorchakov started to collect paintings of old masters in 1834. But at the beginning of 1840s Gorchakov changed direction and began to collect contemporary paintings. His gallery that mostly consisted of paintings by Belgian, Dutch and French masters of the 19th century was inherited by his sons and later by his grandchildren that continued collecting. But after nationalization in 1918 the collection was scattered and only its part got to the Hermitage.

As opposed to Gorchakov and Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky Baron Alexander Schtiglitz (1814-1884), the first-rate Russian financier and industrialist, was not a collector himself. Central College of Technical Drawing and museum were established through his donations in 1881. The college was named after the baron. Initially created for educating students, not only accomplished its task but soon turned into the richest collection which presented the entire history of applied arts - from monuments of early medieval ages to works of modern time. In 1924, it naturally joined the Hermitage collection, amplifying it considerably.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue (Slaviya Publishing House, 2009). Exhibition curator is Ekaterina Nekrasova, junior research assistant of the Department of Western-European Applied Art of the State Hermitage.

Fan in the form of a mask 1770-s Larger view

Study 1845 Larger view