Gift to the Hermitage: A watercolor by Grigory G. Chernetsov entitled The Golden Drawing Room in the Winter Palace

On 3 February 2005 Moscow art collector Vladimir A. Logvinenko formally transferred to the State Hermitage his donation of a watercolor by Grigory G. Chernetsov entitled The Golden Drawing Room in the Winter Palace during a special ceremony in the Rubens Room (New Hermitage). The picture was acquired on 30 November 2004 at the auction "Important Russian Pictures" in the London headquarters of Christie's.

This work by the well-known artist G.G. Chernetsov was dated 1833 by the painter and is especially valuable due to the fact that it captures the way the interior decor of the Winter Palace looked before its destruction by fire in 1837. In speaking of the historical and cultural importance of this work, we note that among other events to have taken place in the Golden Drawing Room, it was here that Empress Alexandra Fedorovna (the wife of Nicholas I) received the poet Alexander Pushkin on 8 April 1834. The poet was presented to her on the occasion of his admission to the rank of Kammerjunker. The journal of the Empress's attendant recorded that the poet "thanked her for granting him this title."

From both an historical perspective and from an artistic standpoint, the acquisition of this watercolor by G.G. Chernetsov is a significant event for the Hermitage.

Golden Drawing Room in the Winter Palace
1833
Larger view