Works on Paper by Thomas de Thomon in the Hermitage

On 22 February 2011 the exhibition of graphic art by an outstanding architect Thomas de Thomon was opened in the State Hermitage Museum. The exhibition includes more than 100 graphic works by the master among which are pictures, drawings, engravings and publications.

Thomas de Thomon, A French neoclassic in Russia of the early XIX century, was mainly known as author of one of the most impressive Saint Petersburg attractions - Stock Exchange of the Spit of Vasilievsky Island. It was mainly Thomon who made Russia of the XIX century take a liking to the pronounced features of the Doric order, extremely big, expressive and monumental forms.

Thomon, who is sometimes called "the architect of one ensemble", in fact had a chance to try himself in different areas of architectural art: landscape gardening, redecorating of indoor scenes, work on memorials. The exhibition gives the complete idea of the master’s catholic talent. He is seen not only as an architect but also as a talented graphic artist.

The Hermitage collection, along with its artistic merits and historic value, is notable for certain integrity. While other similar collections were formed later from isolated papers, the Hermitage collection stores the most important part of Thomon’s heritage received by Russian tsar Alexander I from the architect’s widow soon after his death and then given to the museum. An important part of Thomon’s works form three albums of the Souvenir d’Italie series now kept in the Hermitage; the series consisted of five albums all in all. Of high importance is the Hermitage collection of Thomon’s engravings and a few copies of his publications, especially his Traite de peinture (Treatise on Painting) - a sample of the aesthetic position of the artist of the early XIX century.

The drafts and pictures by Thomon kept in the Hermitage did not often become an object of close study and were usually examined in combination with works by his contemporaries. Only sometimes separate pages were exhibited. It is the first big exhibition fully devoted to Thomas de Thomon’s art.

The exhibition timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the architect’s birth is accompanied with the publication of a  scientific catalogue of Thomas de Thomon’s Hermitage collection and a Russian translation of his Treatise on Painting.

The exhibition’s curator is Valery Georgievich Shevchenko, leading research worker of the section of paintings of the Hermitage Department of Western Art.

More

At the ceremony of the opening

Valery Shevchenko, curator of the exhibition

Alexander Sokurov

Scientific catalogue of Thomas de Thomon’s Hermitage collection

Treatise on Painting by Thomas de Thomon