The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation | The State Tretyakov Gallery |
The Government of the Tver Region | The Cultural Affairs Committee of the Tver Region |
The Tver Regional Picture Gallery
12, Lavrushinsky Lane, Engineering Wing, halls on the 2nd floor
Getting here. Opening times
The thirty-sixth exhibition of the federal project "Golden Map of Russia" continues to acquaint public of the Russian capital with the best museum collections of Russian province. This time the project presents the Tver Regional Picture Gallery - one of the oldest regional art museums of Russia.
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Vladimir Borovikovskiy.
Portrait of A.V.Polikarpov. 1796
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The museum was opened to public in 1866. At the moment its funds in total contain about 40 thousand pieces of painting, sculpture, drawing, arts and crafts of the 13th - 21st centuries. An object of the special pride of the museum is the collection of painting, consisting of more than 7 thousand exhibits. The exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery displays about sixty brightest and the most significant for the Tver Gallery pictures of the first half of the 19th century. That was the reign period of two emperors - Alexander I (1801-1825) and Nikolay I (1825-1855) and it was known as an epoch of romanticism in Russian culture. At that time landscape and portrait painting experienced a high artistic rise, and were gaining independence, as branches of art.
A collection of Russian portraits in the Tver Gallery is one of the best in Russia, which adds uniqueness to the museum. At the exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery, this genre is represented by a wide range of works from chamber to gala portraits by the greatest artists of the end of the 18th - the beginnings of the 19th centuries: V.Borovikovskiy, V.Tropinin and A.Venetsianov. "Portrait of Alexander I" (1809) by Stepan Schukin, the court painter of the emperor Paul I, is also presented at the exhibition. Stepan Schukin was considered to be the forerunner of the romantic portrait genre in Russia.
A group of portraits by unknown local artists in the collection are of special interest. They are remarkable for their originality and high artistic value; among them - "Portrait of a merchant woman in a red shawl" (first quarter of the 19th century), "Portrait of the wife of the Archpriest Mozhzhukhin" (1830) and others. The sitters on the portraits are all from the various social strata of the Tver society, and demonstrate the peculiarity of the time – the rise of interest to portraiture among merchants and new bourgeoisie.
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Aleksey Venetsianov.
A Herd-Boy with a Pipe. 1820-s
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The landscape genre is represented by the pictures of outstanding artists of the time. F.Alekseev is a great master of "perspective painting". His canvas "View on the Stock Exchange and the Admiralty from the Peter and Paul Fortresses" (1810) is one of the best in the museum’s collection. The artist brings details of a daily life of the town into the traditionally solemn city landscape. The sensation of the overall harmony is achieved by a fine artistic depicting of the ambient light and air. F.Alekseev's creativity had a great impact on S.Shñhedrin ("Sorrento", 1825). In pictures of the latter the strictness of classicism gives way to romantic perception of the nature.
The works of Ivan Ayvazovskiy deliver a diversity of themes and expand the landscape geography. In 1922 two art collectors M.M.Grachev and A.P.Katkova gave the Tver museum landscapes by I. Ayvazovskiy, M.Vorobev and Chernetsov-brothers along with some other paintings and drawings by Russian artists of the 19th century.
The special attention at the exhibition is paid to the canvases of A.Venetsianov and the pupils of his art school. Due to the master’s creativity and efforts, the genre art got the form of a harmonious artistic system. Moscow public can enjoy a rare chance to see one of the best pictures of the artist, being a "visit card" of the Tver museum, and thus seldom leaving its halls - "A Herd-Boy with a Pipe" (1825).
A.Venetsianov organized an art school for children of serfs in the estate Safonkovo of the Tver province, which he had bought in 1815. Among the works of A.Venetsianov’s pupils are pictures by N.Krylov, G.Soroka, and A.Tyranov. A.Tyranov, however, was not a serf by origin, he was born in a Tver petty bourgeoises family. Some of these pictures were acquired for the collection of the museum in the second half of the 19th century.
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Grigory Soroka. View on Ostrovki estate
from the Bolshoi island. 1830-1840
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G.Soroka was one of the most talented pupils of A.Venetsianov. He was a serf of P.I.Milyukov (his portrait, painted by G.Soroka in 1820s, is presented at the exhibition too). The most part of G.Soroka’s creative life is connected with the country estate of the Milyukovs. The future artist got acquainted with A.Venetsianov and painted the portrait of his teacher (in 1840s) there. The portrait is also included in the exhibition. Another important for the museum acquisition of 1998 – a picture "View on Ostrovki estate from the Bolshoi island" (1846) by G.Soroka one can also see these days in the Tretyakov Gallery. In the picture the Milykovs’ estate is depicted against a romantic landscape park. Formerly this work was known only after the description of N.K.Milyukov, the grandson of the owner of the artist, published in the magazine "Old Years" in 1916. Then the picture’s traces were lost. At the end of the 20th century, the canvas was found in one of the private collections in the city Tver, and after the examination for the confirmation of its originality, it was acquired by the Tver Gallery. The canvas was in a very poor condition. It appeared in the museum exposition only after a very complicated restoration.
The exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery gives the viewers the general idea of the painting collection of the Tver Regional Picture Gallery, and also acquaints the Moscow public with yet unfamiliar works of Russian art of the first half of the 19th century.
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