A day out yesterday, to the Royal Academy to see some of the paintings we’ve never seen before.
From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg
The exhibition presents modern masterpieces drawn from Russia’s principal collections: the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Hermitage Museum and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
The biggest surprise was the colour and vibrancy of Matisse’s The Dance; but there were many other paintings on show, by Braque, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Chagall, Kandinsky, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and others, including a section devoted to Russian Cubo-Futurism.
The exhibition will remain at the Royal Academy of Arts until the 18th April.
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Apr 4th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Any sign of the ‘father’ of the movement’? Do we know why the Russians decided to buy this stuff? Was there any indication as to the idividuals(s) behind the decision to purchase?
Hmm.
jb says: Yes, Dean, quite a large section of the exhibition is given over to two Moscow collections, those of Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin . These two Moscow textile merchants were daring Russian collectors of their day. They searched Paris for paintings by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and accumulated works by many of the artists working at that time. Shchukin became Matisse’s greatest patron, commissioning The Dance as part of a bold scheme to decorate the grand staircase of his Moscow mansion.