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The New Hermitage in mid-nineteenth-century watercolours The New Hermitage in St. Petersburg opened on the orders of Emperor Nicholas I on Tuesday, 5 February 1852. No formal speeches were made on that occasion. Only in the evening was this remarkable event in the life of the Russian capital marked by opulent court festivities held in the halls of the museum and attended by all the elite of aristocratic society. The decision to erect a special museum building designed by the Bavarian architect Leo von Klenze in St Petersburg was taken in July 1839. The construction was entrusted to a Special Commission headed by the architect Vasily Stasov. His chief assistant was Nikolai Yefimov who took over direction of the project after Stasov's death in 1848 and saw the work through to completion. The project was worked up by Leo von Klenze. He produced the architectural and constructional drawings for the building, designs for the interior decoration and drawings of the furniture, display-cases and stands for hanging the paintings. Over the period of construction, between 1839 and 1851, Klenze visited St Petersburg seven times. The designs for the building and models for the sculptural works on the facade were sent from Munich to the construction site as they were completed. In order to better adapt it to the climatic conditions of St Petersburg, Klenze's plans were in part amended on the spot. At times this reworking was quite radical. The building of the New Hermitage is a typical product of the era of Historicism. Its forms are restrained and geometrically regular. The architect himself believed that the building was created in the Neo-Grecian style. In September 1850 the Emperor himself issued instructions that the building should henceforth be referred to as "the New Hermitage". In July 1851 the rules that would govern the operation of the future museum were approved and published. The size and structure of the staff were laid down as were the principles for the display of the various collections: statues, paintings, coins, gems, engravings, books and so on. In December 1852 the academician Konstantin Ukhtomsky was commissioned by Nicholas I to paint watercolours of absolutely all the halls of the New Hermitage. He invited to collaborate on the project two already well-known perspective artists, Luigi Premazzi and Eduard Hau. All three artists possessed an excellent command of the rules of linear perspective and immaculate academic schooling in their craft. Between 1852 and 1861 they produced 55 pictures of the New Hermitage - 25 by Ukhtomsky, 20 by Hau and 10 by Premazzi. Completing the series of watercolours, Ukhtomsky himself wrote the inscriptions on the mounts of the works indicating the numbers of the different halls and created a title page for the "ouvrage". Premazzi's watercolour A View of the New Hermitage was added to the series later. For all their chromatic qualities, the watercolours by Ukhtomsky, Hau and Premazzi are splendid examples of architectural drawing. In creating a sort of "portrait of the museum interior", the artists employed a single system of working in watercolour in which precise, almost illusory depiction of the setting and a finely developed sense of colour are combined with a superb grasp of perspective with all the subtleties of its construction, and the ability to find an advantageous viewpoint. Today the mid-nineteenth-century watercolour views of the halls in the New Hermitage have acquired a documentary significance for us: they record the life of the museum and the displays in the early years of its existence. Gathered together within the framework of a virtual tour, they are to become elements in a forthcoming programme devoted to the 150th anniversary of the New Hermitage, a programme that on account of the form and scope of the data assembled will, we hope, be at one and the same time a reference resource and a guide to the history of the first public museum in Russia. |
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Copyright © 2006 State Hermitage Museum |
