On 6 September 2024, the first exhibition will open at the Hermitage–Eurasia in Orenburg. It is devoted to portraiture of the 1830s–50s, a period often referred to as the “Age of Briullov”.
Portrait of Prince Frederick of Württemberg
Circa 1830
Portrait of Nikolai Petrovich Botkin
Early 1840s
Portrait of Countess Yulia P. Stroganova
1848
The display comprises 58 paintings by native and foreign-born artists who worked in Russia at that time. Twenty-three works are being exhibited for the first time, many with fresh attributions and dating. The exhibition is opening in the year that sees the 225th anniversary of the birth of Karl Pavlovich Briullov (1799–1852) and is a sort of homage to the great artist.
“This is an exhibition about the most fascinating thing in museum life – searches and discoveries, about the delight of attribution, when after prolonged investigation of objects and documents you are able to identify the artist and understand what and who is depicted. At that moment, a painting begins to talk with the viewer. Without research, they are not devoid of life, of course, but they say very little. Museum research turns works of art into masterpieces, fills them with a host of new meanings. The excitement of research – one of the delights of museum life – is joyfully passed on to the viewer in exhibitions like this,” Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, commented.
The Hermitage collection contains six works by Karl Briullov dating from various stages in his artistic career: from a sketch for his programme in pursuit of Large Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts to works from the 1840s. The exhibition presents to the general public for the first time his Portrait of Prince Frederick of Württemberg: for exactly a century (from 1924) this masterpiece was kept in the museum stocks as a work by Adolphe Ladurner, but the results of recent research made it possible to definitively establish Briullov’s authorship.
His works stand out not only as memorable images characteristic of their time, but also for their extremely high standard of execution. They harmoniously combine decorativeness, virtuosity and illusionism – the chief tendencies in painting during the middle decades of the 19th century. Karl Briullov’s pictures have a sense of liveliness and dynamism, expressed in the animated state of the model, a natural composition, strong lighting and decorative colour, as well as an energetic moulding of volume.
By the moment Briullov returned to Saint Petersburg from Italy in 1836, he was already the celebrated creator of the painting The Last Day of Pompeii, which confirmed the ability of this country’s art to compete in the West. Gogol described the artist as “the bright resurrection of painting” and “a complete, universal creation” with a “glittering” brush. It was from that time that the “Age of Briullov” began in Russian art, ending only in the early 1860s. For a quarter of a century, the output of the “great Karl” became a guiding light for his many pupils and followers.
Karl Briullov was an absolute hero and the foremost artist of the 1830s – a time that accentuated a striving after fresh content and new form. The “Age of Briullov” also gave the world other worthy portraitists, each of whom developed one or other tendency characteristic of his day. The works by Piotr Basin and Ivan Makarov demonstrate a delicate and subtle manner of painting, the portraits by Piotr Zakharov a virtuoso handling of texture, and the pictures by Alexei Tyranov and Sergei Zarianko naturalistic effects emphasizing volume, while the works of Yakov Kapkov and Gavriil Yakovlev are marked by their emotionality and attentiveness to their personages, naturalness and truth to life.
A considerable portion of the display is made up of works by foreign artist contemporaries of Briullov who forged quite good careers for themselves in the Russian Empire. Timofei (Timoleon Carl von) Neff, Johann Conrad Dorner, Cosroe Dusi, François Riss, Eugène Pluchart and Carl von Steuben were granted commissions for the decoration of St Isaac’s Cathedral. Portraits painted by Franz Krüger, Adolph Jebens, Johann Huber, Joseph-Désiré Court, Christina Robertson and others adorned aristocratic drawing-rooms, less wealthy residences and the mansions of the merchant class. Foreigners found clients not only in the capital: Giuseppe Solferini worked in Odessa, Sándor Kozina and Carl Johann Lasch in Moscow, Heinrich Hollpein in Ukraine.
The exhibition curator is Yury Yuryevich Gudymenko, Candidate of Art Studies, leading researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of the History of Russian Culture.
The exhibition can be visited by holders of tickets to the Hermitage–Eurasia centre until 15 March 2025.
