Portrait Painting in Russia: 18th鈥� Early 20th Centuries from the Collection of the State Hermitage
The exhibition introduces visitors to one of the finest collections within the stocks of the Department of the History of Russian Culture: that of Russian portraits painted between the 18th century and the start of the 20th. The display contains 75 paintings. Alongside already well-known pictures, 36 works restored in the past decade are being presented for the first time, some with fresh attributions and research results.
The pictures selected for the exhibition include paintings by celebrated masters. There are also portraits by foreign artists who worked in Russia. Among the significant works, particular mention should be made of a portrait by Dmitry Levitsky that was recently acquired by the Hermitage and is believed to depict Alexei Novikov, the brother of the prominent late 18th-century publisher and freemason Nikolai Novikov.
An important event will be the first public showing of an early work by Karl Briullov 鈥� his Portrait of Prince Gagarin鈥檚 Children. In a poor state of preservation, heavily soiled, without a stretcher and with multiple splits in the canvas, this piece was at some point in time (most probably straight after the war) given to the Hermitage鈥檚 restoration workshop as a painting by an unknown artist for use as material for experimentation. The portrait remained there for many decades and was not linked to the picture by Briullov that was believed lost. The restoration carried out last year gave the work back its original appearance and it is being displayed like that for the first time at the exhibition in Vyborg. Also of particular interest is the public debut of a portrait of Princess Zinaida Yusupova attributed to Valentin Serov. The exhibition will be the first to include a Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Nikolai Milioti, which was executed on the back of the same artist鈥檚 depiction of A Company in a Restaurant. The painting is being displayed after a highly complex restoration that has made it possible to bring back two remarkable works at once.
A special place in the exhibition is taken by a group of pictures that are customarily referred to as 鈥減rovincial鈥�. Today it is becoming ever clearer that such pieces do possess indisputable historical and aesthetic value and represent a major, underappreciated phenomenon in art. The display includes works by four provincial artists: Ivan Shevtsov, Akim Bagayev, Feodor Tulov and Pimen Orlov. The Hermitage鈥檚 stocks contain hundreds of works like these (more often than not anonymous), the study and proper recognition of which remains a matter for the future. Work continues on scrupulous attribution, the study of the pictures鈥� stylistic characteristics and the biographies of lesser-known Russian artists. The present exhibition is one result of this very research, much of which has been done in recent years.
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The exhibition introduces visitors to one of the finest collections within the stocks of the Department of the History of Russian Culture: that of Russian portraits painted between the 18th century and the start of the 20th. The display contains 75 paintings. Alongside already well-known pictures, 36 works restored in the past decade are being presented for the first time, some with fresh attributions and research results.
The pictures selected for the exhibition include paintings by celebrated masters. There are also portraits by foreign artists who worked in Russia. Among the significant works, particular mention should be made of a portrait by Dmitry Levitsky that was recently acquired by the Hermitage and is believed to depict Alexei Novikov, the brother of the prominent late 18th-century publisher and freemason Nikolai Novikov.
An important event will be the first public showing of an early work by Karl Briullov 鈥� his Portrait of Prince Gagarin鈥檚 Children. In a poor state of preservation, heavily soiled, without a stretcher and with multiple splits in the canvas, this piece was at some point in time (most probably straight after the war) given to the Hermitage鈥檚 restoration workshop as a painting by an unknown artist for use as material for experimentation. The portrait remained there for many decades and was not linked to the picture by Briullov that was believed lost. The restoration carried out last year gave the work back its original appearance and it is being displayed like that for the first time at the exhibition in Vyborg. Also of particular interest is the public debut of a portrait of Princess Zinaida Yusupova attributed to Valentin Serov. The exhibition will be the first to include a Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Nikolai Milioti, which was executed on the back of the same artist鈥檚 depiction of A Company in a Restaurant. The painting is being displayed after a highly complex restoration that has made it possible to bring back two remarkable works at once.
A special place in the exhibition is taken by a group of pictures that are customarily referred to as 鈥減rovincial鈥�. Today it is becoming ever clearer that such pieces do possess indisputable historical and aesthetic value and represent a major, underappreciated phenomenon in art. The display includes works by four provincial artists: Ivan Shevtsov, Akim Bagayev, Feodor Tulov and Pimen Orlov. The Hermitage鈥檚 stocks contain hundreds of works like these (more often than not anonymous), the study and proper recognition of which remains a matter for the future. Work continues on scrupulous attribution, the study of the pictures鈥� stylistic characteristics and the biographies of lesser-known Russian artists. The present exhibition is one result of this very research, much of which has been done in recent years.
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