Russian Museum The State Russian Museum is home to the world's largest collection of Russian fine art. It was opened in 1898 by decree of Tsar Nicholas II and was county's first ever state museum of Russian fine art, which was able to represent for the visitors the complete notion about history of it's development. From the early beginning the collection was displaced in the Mikhailovsky Palace, which was built for Mikhail Pavlovich - the son of the Tsar Pavel I.
The nucleus of the Museum collection consist of oil paintings, sculptures, graphics, decorative and applied arts. In the hole it was less then 1500 units, which came chiefly from the Hermitage, the Museum of the Academy of Arts and from royal Palaces, and only to a much lesser extent from privet sources, such as the Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky collection acquired from his heirs. The Russian Museum collection almost doubled in size during the first ten years of its existence. Academy of Arts also transferred its collection of Christians antiques - five thousands units - including Novgorod's icons, wooden sculpture and examples of middle-centuries church art. The presented Lobanov-Rostovsky collection included the 95 portraits of Russian statesman of the 18-19 centuries.
Another source of acquisitions was the collection housed at the Alexander I Palace in Tsarskoye Selo (later it was added by the collection from Anichkov Palace).
The substantial addition was the Nicolay Lihachev's collection of Greek and Old-Russian icons.
The marketable extent of fine art works was presented to the Museum from the privet sources. It is necessary to say that the Russian Museum did not suffered from the October Revolution. All the nationalized privet collections and individual works were placed in the charge of museums. During first decade after the Revolution the Russian Museum collection, including its picture gallery, were enlarge several times over their original size. Simultaneously with these increase in the Museum's holdings, numerous works of art was transferred to central and provincial museums, many of which had just been established. The ties of the Russian Museum with the Hermitage and the Tretyakov Gallery permitted a mutually advantageous exchange of artistic treasures.
 In our days the collection of the Russian Museum numbers some 400,000 works and covers the entire history of Russian fine art from the tenth century to the present day. It reflects virtually every form and genre of art in Russia, including a unique collection of Old Russian icons, works of painting, graphic art and sculpture, decorative and applied art, folk art and numismatics, as well as the world's finest collection of Russian avant-garde.
Since the 1976, the Russian museum has been a National center coordinating the academic and methodological work of all the art museums of Russia. In 1992, the President of the Russian Federation signed up a decree acknowledging the Museum as a special object of national cultural heritage.
The museum then became the owner of three more palaces in the center of St Petersburg, the Stroganov Palace, Marble Palace and St. Michael's Castle. Restoration work is currently going on in each of these palaces. Nevertheless, they all already house expositions and exhibitions from the collection of the Russian Museum.
The Russian Museum holds one of Russia's leading collections of icons and Old Russian applied art. A start was made to this collection back in 1898, when the museum was founded. Acquisitions made in the 1900s and early 1910s were of enormous significance for the collection. The collection was added to in the years following the revolution by acquisitions made through the Museum Fund, as well as directly from churches and monasteries. Later, particularly in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, regular expeditions of museum research assistants and restorers were organized to gather works of Old Russian art. These became an important source of new acquisitions. The collection currently includes some 6,000 icons and roughly the same number of works of Old Russian applied art.
During the period of the initial organization of the museum and the first post-revolutionary years, its collection of painting was augmented by works from the Hermitage, the Academy of Arts, major private collections and former palaces. The museum was also already acquiring works directly from exhibitions and artists' studios at the very start of the century. After the closure of the Museum of Art Culture in 1926, its collection of mostly avant-garde art was inherited by the Russian Museum almost in its entirety. Later, the collection was added to by gifts from collectors, artists and members of their families, as well as by acquisitions. The Russian Museum's collection of paintings by artists working in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries currently numbers more than 10,000 works.
Ever since the Russian Museum was founded in 1895, the Russian school of painting of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries has constituted the heart of its collection.
 Eighty paintings were initially transferred to the Russian Museum from the Imperial Hermitage, including such masterpieces as Karl Brullov's “ The Last Day of Pompeii” , Fidelio Bruni's “ The Brazen Serpent” , Hovhannes Aivazovsky's “ The Ninth Wave”, Henryk Siemiradzki's “ Phrine at the Festival of Poseidon at the Eleusinia” , Vladimir Borovikovsky's “ Portrait of Murtaza Kuli Khan” and Alexander Ivanov's “ Christ's Appearance to St Mary Magdalene”.
Even when it first opened back in 1898, the Russian Museum owned many canvases painted by such masters of the second half of the nineteenth century as Hovhannes Aivazovsky, Konstantin Makovsky, Ilya Repin, Vasily Polenov and Vasily Surikov. Although the selection of works before the revolution was often hampered by the conservative tastes of museum officialdom, the collection nevertheless grew in breadth thanks to the efforts of Alexander Benois, Albert Benois, Igor Grabar and Pyotr Neradovsky.
The collection of the painting of the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continued to grow in the 1930s. Ilya Repin's “ Centennial Sitting of the State Council” was acquired from the Museum of the Revolution. The Tretyakov Gallery donated a number of canvases by masters not fully represented in the Russian Museum, including Vasily Perov's “ Lonely Guitarist” and “ Portrait of Ivan Turgenev” , Nikolai Nevrev's “ Self-Portrait” , Mikhail Vrubel's “ Flying Demon” and Philipp Malyavin's “ Peasant Women”.
Today the unique and comprehensive collection of the Russian Museum affords an exceptional opportunity for an all-round, detailed study of the development of artistic ideas and culture in Russia over a period a period of nearly two and a half centuries.
The Russian Museum is open daily, except Tuesdays, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. But the ticket you can buy till 4:00 p.m. only. |
