Paintings from the Russian Museum Collection [antikvár]

The Russian Museum of Leningrád is a treasure-house of Russian art which has acquired worldwide fame. Ali branches of Russian fine arts are exhaustively represented here, and it is in this above all that it differs from all other Soviet museums. Its more than 250,000 items consist of numerous samples of the art and handicrafts of Old Russia, a most imposing collection of painting and sculpture, thousands of drawings, water-colours and engravings and, finally, priceless works of decorative and applied art. The collection of paintings (approximately 9,000 in number) boasts magnificent canvases by the most prominent Russian artists, reflecting all the most important stages in the history of Russian art from the early seventeenth century to the present day. Somé of its sections are unsurpassed in the volume and uniqueness of their material. Amassed here, for instance, are almost all the outstanding works of the painters and sculptors of the Academic school. The Museum possesses all seven portraits of the Smolny Institute schoolgirls by D. Levitsky, most of P. Fedotov's portraits, the works of A. Kuinji's last thirty years, the late paintings of V. Surikov, the majority of V. Serov's vorks of his final creative period and many other Russian canvases the study of which is absolutely ndispensable if one is to understand the art of these great masters. It was in March 1898 that the doors of the first State Russian Museum of national art were thrown open to the public. The collections were put on show in the Mikhailovsky Palace, one of the most magnificent architectural monuments of the Russian Empire style, erected in 1819-1825 by the great architect Rossi, who was alsó responsible for the interior decoration of the palace. Few buildings can vie with the Mikhailovsky Palace in clarity and harmony of design, and this, too, is an additional feature of the boundless artistic wealth of the Museum. Somé forty years ago the adjacent building, put up at the turn of the twentieth century to the design of the architect L. Benois, was assigned to the Museum for use as an exhibition hall. The rooms of the so-called Rossi wings, originally occupied by the palace's maintenance services, were alsó converted into show-rooms. To this day these buildings house the collections of the Russian Museum, but great changes have since taken place in their composition and in the exhibition on display in its 120 halls. The Museum's collection of paintings numbered in the beginning only 434 pieces. These consisted of works by Russian artists which were transferred from the Museum of the Academy of Arts and the Hermitage, pictures and sculpture pieces from the royal palaces plus a small number donated by priváté collectors. The various periods, styles and the most important artists were unevenly represented. The Museum had on display almost all of the better-known paintings of the artists of the Academic school and practically none at all by early eighteenth century masters. Works of art of the second half of the nineteenth century were alsó few in number, though even then several magnificent canvases created by