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Art of Portrait: West European Paintings and
The exhibition in the Novosibirsk Art Gallery is the first of a series of shows loaned by one of the world’s largest museums, offered to Siberian public by the Hermitage in Siberia Program prepared by the State Hermitage Museum jointly with the company Basic Element, which coorganized and sponsored the Program. Including 23 paintings and 4 portrait busts, the exhibition for the first time brings together disparate parts of the world’s biggest Rossica (as foreigners’ creations inspired by Russia are traditionally called) preserved in the Hermitage. Almost all of the portraits showed in the exhibit were executed to Russian clients’ orders by excellent portrait painters who were skillful practitioners of their trade, as was usual among old masters. The artists include England’s George Dawe, Germany’s Franz Krueger, Sweden’s Alexander Roslin, Christian Daniel Rauch, one of the most remarkable European sculptors of the first half of the 19th century, and others. Ceremonial portraits made to order are a traditional genre of European painting, which arose during the age of Renaissance including all its specific characteristics. Works of this kind contain neither psychological profundities nor complicated characterizations. What matters here is the creation of an image which would conform to the client’s idea of him- or herself. The earliest portrait in the display is of Peter III, grandson of Peter the Great, which dates back to 1761. Its author L.K. Pfanzelt was the first professional restorer in Russia and the first custodian of Catherine II’s painting gallery. The portrait of A.A. Bezborodko, the prominent statesman during the reigns of Catherine the Great and Paul I, diplomat and collector and patron of art, which was painted by the famous artist I.B. Lampi in 1794, is one of the best in the exhibit. The portraits of Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich (future Emperor Nicholas I) of 1821 and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, elder daughter of Nicholas I, of 1843, were sculptured by Ch.D. Rauch, Professor of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin and member of many foreign Academies of Arts. The exhibits, many of which have never been showed before, are remarkable as both excellent works of art and as important mementos of long and fecund cultural links between Russia and Europe. The exhibition is complemented by twelve photographs from the album The Imperial Hermitage, made in the 1890s for the Directorate of Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg. They show what the famous museum’s best known interiors looked like in the late 19th century. The State Hermitage Museum jointly with Slaviya Publishers of St. Petersburg has prepared an illustrated catalogue including 64 pages. The idea of the exhibition and its catalogue was proposed by Dr. B.I. Asvarishch, chief research assistant of the Hermitage Department of West European Art, who authored the text together with Ye.I. Karcheva. The exhibition in the Novosibirsk Art Gallery was prepared with the participation of M.O. Dedinkin, senior research assistant at the Hermitage Department of West European Art. |
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Copyright © 2006 State
Hermitage Museum |
