The State Tretyakov Gallery is a Russian state art museum located in
Moscow, created on the basis of the historical collections of the
merchant brothers Pavel and Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov; one of the
largest collections of Russian fine art in the world.
The history
of the gallery is traditionally counted from 1856 - the time of the
first documented acquisitions of P. M. Tretyakov; in 1867 the gallery
was opened to the public, and in 1892 it was transferred to the
ownership of Moscow. At the time of the transfer, the museum's
collection consisted of 1276 paintings, 471 drawings, ten sculptures by
Russian artists, as well as 84 paintings by foreign masters. After the
revolution of 1917, the gallery was nationalized, the collection began
to replenish from confiscated private collections and museums. In 1985,
the State Art Gallery on Krymsky Val was merged with the Tretyakov
Gallery and formed a single museum complex - the New Tretyakov Gallery
together with the Central House of Artists. The building in Lavrushinsky
Lane housed a collection of paintings from ancient times to the 1910s,
and the department on Krymsky Val housed the art of the 20th century.
As of 2018, the exhibition has more than 180,000 items and includes
paintings, sculptures and precious metal items created from the 11th to
the 20th century. The museum is located in a building built in 1906 - an
object of cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia of federal
significance and is protected by the state.
The founder of the gallery is the industrialist and philanthropist
Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, who came from a poor merchant family.
Together with his brother Sergei, they created the Kostroma Linen
Manufactory, which brought a steady income. Subsequently, the Tretyakov
brothers became interested in charity and collecting paintings: Pavel -
the works of Russian artists, and Sergei - canvases of Western European
masters.
The gallery was founded in 1856, when Pavel Tretyakov
acquired two works by contemporary Russian artists: The Temptation by
Nikolai Schilder and Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by Vasily
Khudyakov. These are not the first works bought by the patron, however,
reliable data on earlier acquisitions have not been preserved. The
collector wanted to create a national museum that would showcase the
work of Russian artists.
“For me, who truly and ardently love
painting, there can be no better desire than to lay the foundation for a
public, accessible repository of fine arts, bringing benefits to many,
all pleasure. I would like to leave the national gallery, that is,
consisting of paintings by Russian artists.
Pavel Tretyakov"
“In 1862, Tretyakov acquired the work “Rural Procession at Easter,”
written by Vasily Perov. The canvas depicted an anti-church satire - the
participants in the procession were shown drunk, and their images were
primitized, which caused questions from the investigator of the
Prechistenskaya and Khamovnicheskaya police units. In subsequent years
the collection of the gallery includes works by Wanderers: "Peter I
interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich in Peterhof" by Nikolai Ge,
paintings by Ivan Shishkin, Alexei Bogolyubov, Mikhail Klodt, Konstantin
Savitsky, Arkhip Kuindzhi and Karl Gun. Tretyakov's communication with
artist Ivan Kramskoy, who helped form the exposition and select
canvases.
Let's start with the fact that Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov
collected exclusively contemporary art. <...> Tretyakov bought not just
works created today. He was ahead of his time - he bought the idea.
former director of the Tretyakov Gallery Zelfira Tregulova"
In
1867, Tretyakov opened his estate to the public - the museum in
Lavrushinsky Lane was called the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei
Tretyakov and included 1276 paintings, 471 drawings, 10 sculptures by
Russian artists, and 84 paintings by foreign masters. In 1868, Tretyakov
was elected an honorary free society of the Academy of Arts, which
allowed the patron to officially support little-known masters: Vasily
Maksimov, Illarion Pryanishnikov, Viktor Vasnetsov and Vladimir
Makovsky. On the advice of Leo Tolstoy, Tretyakov bought the paintings
"Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581" by Ilya Repin
and "Mercy" by Nikolai Ge, which were not approved by the imperial
authorities. This inspired artists not to be afraid of censorship.
At the turn of the 1890s, the Tretyakov Gallery acquired the status
of a national museum, private in affiliation and public in nature. This
meant that the gallery was open to the public free of charge for any
visitor. At the same time, Pavel Tretyakov began to take part in
organizing state events. So, the philanthropist decided the issue of
creating a department of Russian painting at the international
exhibition of 1892 in Paris.
In 1892, Pavel Tretyakov donated the
gallery to Moscow. The reason was the death of his brother, who before
his death bequeathed to Moscow half of the house in Lavrushinsky Lane, a
capital of 125 thousand rubles and an art collection. To speed up the
transfer, Pavel consolidated the collections and donated them to the
city. At that time, the collection of the Tretyakov brothers contained
more than two thousand works of painting, sculpture and graphics. By
decision of the city duma, Pavel Tretyakov was appointed lifelong
curator of the gallery. His duties included the selection of works for
the permanent exhibition, the acquisition of paintings with public
funds, as well as resolving issues of expanding the museum's premises.
In honor of the transfer of the gallery to the city in 1894, the Moscow
Society of Art Lovers gathered the First Congress of Russian Artists, at
which the artist Nikolai Ge made a speech.
The basis of the museum collection was formed in the
1860-1880s. In 1872-1873, Perov painted for Pavel Tretyakov portraits of
the writers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ivan Turgenev, the historian Mikhail
Pogodin, the scientist Vladimir Dahl, and the poet Apollo Maykov. The
portrait of Turgenev was not liked by Tretyakov, who personally knew the
writer.
“You say that you have the impression of something
leonine in the figure of Turgenev. In the portrait of Repin, this is:
but there is no Turgenev as we know him, there is no what is in the
portrait of Goncharov, that is, a perfect living person like him There
is..."
Pavel Tretyakov
Especially for the collection of the
Tretyakov Gallery in 1873, Ivan Kramskoy painted a portrait of Leo
Tolstoy. To do this, the artist came to Yasnaya Polyana, but the count
was not in the mood for posing and interfered in every possible way with
the process. The writer's son Sergei recalled that Kramskoy was able to
write only the head of Leo Tolstoy, he had to add the rest of the body
and clothes from memory.
In subsequent years, Tretyakov ordered
portraits of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nikolai
Nekrasov, historian Nikolai Kostomarov and writer Alexei Potekhin from
Nikolai Ge.
In 1884, the gallery received Repin's work "The
Religious Procession in the Kursk Province", which, according to
Tretyakov, reflected "peasant reality" and was to be exhibited in a
separate room. A few years later, the canvas was moved to the common
room, and Tretyakov bought his other works from Repin: Refusal of
Confession and Arrest of a Propaganda, in which the artist embodied the
images of revolutionary fighters and the activities of the Narodnaya
Volya group. At the same time, the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery
included works by Vasily Surikov, the first of which, Morning of the
Archery Execution, was bought in 1881 at the IX Traveling Exhibition.
Later, Tretyakov bought Boyar Morozova and other paintings by Surikov,
and Tretyakov followed the creation of some of them right in the studio.
Many works for the Tretyakov Gallery were acquired at exhibitions in
a lively struggle for purchase. The artist Arkady Rylov described the
process of buying his painting “The Burning Fire” in this way:
"Finally, the last day of accepting works for the exhibition came. In
the morning, two servants of the Academy came for the painting. I
decided not to exhibit it, said that the painting was not finished, but
they did not want to listen to me, they almost took the painting from
the easel by force and carried it away. I was so afraid that did not
want to ask if my picture was accepted.
The commission of the museum
(Alexander III in St. Petersburg, now the State Russian Museum) decided
to purchase the painting, but while the protocol was being written,
Tretyakov hurried to make a deposit to the head of the exhibition and
the painting remained with him.
In front of me stood a tall, thin,
bearded man in a frock coat with sunken cheeks and eyes. Pavel
Mikhailovich, like a real merchant, considered it his duty to bargain
with artists, but in this case the price is low, only six hundred
rubles, and the picture is large, three arshins, and the museum
commission goes around here - he only said: “You send me instead of a
concession painting to Moscow at his own expense. Of course, I gladly
agreed, it cost me only twelve rubles.
In the 1890s, the
collections included works by Russian realist artists that depicted the
life of Russian workers. An example of such works was Nikolai
Yaroshenko's "Stoker", "Miner", "Change" and "Coal Miner" by Nikolai
Kasatkin. In the same period, the museum collection included paintings
by Viktor Vasnetsov "Bogatyrs", "Pskovite", a portrait of Pyotr
Tchaikovsky by Nikolai Kuznetsov and others.
Many artists donated
their works to the Tretyakov Gallery. So, in 1894, Isaac Levitan
presented the gallery with the work "Vladimirka", Ge - his portrait
painted by Repin, Son of Perov - his father's painting "Tea Party in
Mytishchi".
Initially, the gallery was located in specially
allocated rooms of the Tretyakov mansion. In 1859, the brothers
purchased more than 140 works from the Turkestan series of paintings and
sketches by Vasily Vereshchagin, because of which there was not enough
space in the mansion. In 1860, the question arose of building a separate
building for the art gallery. The construction was headed by the
architect Alexander Kaminsky. By 1874, he completed the construction of
a two-story building adjacent to the mansion. It was equipped with a
separate entrance for visitors, and the art collection was moved to two
spacious halls.
By the end of the 1880s, the gallery building was
repeatedly completed due to the growing collection of Tretyakov, which
occupied fourteen rooms. As the collection grew, new premises were also
added to the residential part of the mansion, necessary for the storage
and display of works of art - such extensions were made in 1873, 1882,
1885, 1892. After the death of Pavel Tretyakov in 1898, the mansion was
reconstructed for exhibitions, and in 1902-1904 the complex of buildings
was united by a common facade in the form of an old Russian tower, which
Vasnetsov was designing. Vasily Bashkirov headed the construction, the
cost of reconstruction was about 30 thousand rubles.
After the death of Pavel Tretyakov, the management of
the gallery passed to the Board of Trustees, elected by the City
Council. The council at various times included well-known artists and
collectors: Valentin Serov, Ilya Ostroukhov, Ivan Tsvetkov, Sergei
Shcherbatov, Igor Grabar, and Alexandra Botkina, the daughter of Pavel
Tretyakov. Beginning in 1904, members of the Council were re-elected
every four years.
In 1903, for the first time, samples of icon
painting were exhibited in the gallery, which Tretyakov bought back in
the 1890s from antiquarians I. L. Silin and N. M. Postnikov. The works
were kept in Tretyakov's private rooms and were part of the merchant's
quarters. The decision to include icons in the main exhibition belonged
to the head of the council, Ilya Ostroukhov, who is also fond of
collecting iconography. In 1905 Ostroukhov was appointed head of the
museum.
After the revolution of 1905, by decision of the Board of
Trustees in the Tretyakov Gallery, a separate room was equipped with
portraits of democratic artists: Vasily Perov, Ivan Kramskoy, Illarion
Pryanishnikov, Ilya Repin, Vasily Surikov, as well as other artists
involved in debunking the official history of Tsarist Rus'. Positioning
itself as a progressive institution, the museum management could not
ignore the events taking place in the country, however, new acquisitions
caused long disputes in the city duma. So, the works of Mikhail Vrubel
"Pan" and "The Downcast Demon" were discussed.
Conflicts between
the Board of Trustees and members of the Duma also arose on other
occasions. The deputies favored the conservative nature of the gallery,
that is, only famous artists, while the Board of Trustees sought to
acquire works by young masters. In 1909, the Duma vowel Vasiliev accused
the council that because of their “connivance” and careless attitude
towards the exhibits, many canvases were damaged. A specially created
commission established the falsity of Vasiliev's testimony, but rumors
resumed after an incident in 1913, when Abram Balashov, recognized as
mentally ill, cut his faces in Repin's painting "Ivan the Terrible and
his son Ivan on November 16, 1581." After the incident, Ilya Ostroukhov
sent a telegram to the artist with a request to restore the painting. A
new canvas was glued on the inside, the restoration lasted six months.
In 1913, the post of trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery was taken by
the artist Igor Grabar, under whose leadership the museum changed the
concept of exhibition formation: if earlier new acquisitions were
exhibited separately from permanent exhibitions, now the paintings were
hung in historical and chronological order. In the same year, the Moscow
City Council discussed the possibility of constructing a new building to
accommodate an expanded exposition. The members of the Council and the
specially created commission were divided into two camps: one group
believed that it was necessary to build a new museum building, specially
equipped for the needs of the gallery, and the other - that the transfer
of the gallery would violate the will of its creator Pavel Tretyakov.
The latter point of view was supported by a group of St. Petersburg
artists who personally knew the collector. They also published a letter
in the Novoye Vremya newspaper in which they discussed the inconsistency
of building new premises. The opinion of the Board of Trustees of the
Tretyakov Gallery was also divided. Repin joined the opinion of St.
Petersburg artists, Ostroukhov, who believed the opposite, decided to
leave the council.
After the revolution of 1917, the Tretyakov
Gallery was nationalized. According to the new cultural policy of
the Soviet government, the museum was assigned the role of the main
art center of the country, which was supposed to reflect the
development of the USSR. In 1918, the gallery received the status of
a national treasure, and the museum exposition began to replenish
with other nationalized private collections from noble estates. So,
in 1919, the Tretyakov Gallery included the work of Vladimir
Borovikovsky "Portrait of Prince Alexander Kurakin", previously
located in the Kurakino estate of the Oryol province, and in 1921 -
"View of the Cathedral Square in the Kremlin" by Fyodor Alekseev
from the Ivanovskoye estate.
In front of the main facade of
the Tretyakov Gallery there was a monument to Vladimir Lenin, on the
site of which in 1939 a monument to Stalin was erected by sculptor
Sergei Merkulov. In 1958, the monument to Stalin was moved to the
courtyard, and the sculptural group "Football Players" was installed
near the facade of the right wing. Monuments to leaders in 1980 was
replaced by a monument to Pavel Tretyakov, made by sculptor
Alexander Kibalnikov, designed by architect Igor Rozhin.
After the revolution, the Tretyakov Gallery began to develop
scientific and exhibition activities. The first temporary exhibition
was Artistic Works of Moscow Private Collections Exhibited at the
Tretyakov Gallery in 1918. In 1922, a show of paintings by Dmitry
Levitsky was organized, in 1923 - by Fedor Rokotov, and in 1924
exhibitions by Mikhail Vrubel and Pyotr Konchalovsky opened.
Also in 1924, the Tretyakov Gallery included branches: the Museum of
Artistic Culture, the Tsvetkovskaya Gallery, the Museum of
Iconography and Painting, the basis of which was the collection.
In 1926, the post of director of the museum was taken by the
architect Alexei Shchusev, with him the museum exposition was
replenished with canvases of the 19th century, which was liquidated
in 1927 by the State Fund. Two years later, the museum received
formalist paintings from the disbanded Museum of Painting Culture.
Subsequently, the museum collection was replenished through the
State Purchasing Commission, which since the 1930s has played an
important role in the formation of the main exposition. With the
increase in the fund, the need to equip additional premises also
increased. In the 1920s, a store of paintings was made in the
abolished Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi. In 1927-1935, the
middle part of the mansion was supplemented with sixteen new
buildings designed personally by Shchusev. A library and a
scientific department were placed in the attached neighboring house.
Thanks to the addition in 1932, Ivanov's work "The Appearance of
Christ to the People" and sketches for it were placed in a personal
room.
By the end of the 1920s, a department was organized in
the Tretyakov Gallery dedicated to the works of artists from such
leading creative associations as the Association of Artists of
Revolutionary Russia, the Society of Easel Painters and others.
Manuscripts from the archive of papers by Pavel Tretyakov formed the
basis of the fund of materials for the study of Russian art of the
19th-20th centuries.
In 1925, the art collection from the
former Rumyantsev Museum became part of the Tretyakov Gallery,
mainly consisting of works by artists of the 18th and first half of
the 19th centuries: Fyodor Rokotov, Dmitry Levitsky, Vladimir
Borovikovsky, Vasily Tropinin, Karl Bryullov, as well as
representatives of the academic direction. The Museum of New Western
Painting received paintings from the second half of the 19th - early
20th centuries: Korovin, Golovin, Serov, Konenkov. Several works
were accepted from the Leningrad Museum Fund.
In 1933, within the framework of the new cultural
policy of the USSR, a provision was made according to which the museum's
activities were to concentrate on the main areas: the study and
exhibition of paintings, as well as political and educational work in
the field of art of Russia and the peoples of the USSR. At the same
time, a radical restructuring of the Tretyakov Gallery's exposition was
taking place along the Marxist principle, supporting the idea of
"classless" art. All the works of avant-garde artists were transferred
to the depository because of the campaign against formalism that began
in 1936.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, most of
the funds of the Tretyakov Gallery were evacuated to Novosibirsk and
Molotov. Before transportation, the canvases were rolled onto wooden
shafts, lined with tissue paper, and placed in boxes lined with
waterproof material. A total of 17 echelons were sent. Many employees
went to the front, but the scientific activities of the museum did not
stop. During the battle for Moscow in 1941-1942, the building of the
Tretyakov Gallery was badly damaged, its reconstruction was completed
only by 1944. The first post-war exposition opened on May 17, 1945.
In 1960-1970, the museum hosted exhibitions of works of the 1920s:
the Society of Easel Artists, the Four Arts and the Union of Russian
Artists groups, the World of Art, Blue Rose and Jack of Diamonds
associations. After the October Revolution, the Tretyakov Gallery kept
an abstract composition by Wassily Kandinsky “A Painting with White
Lilies”. In 1974, the painting ended up in the hands of a private German
collector, Wilhelm Hack. It is not known exactly how the picture came to
him. Different versions are assumed: the Soviet authorities could
exchange the painting for Lenin's letters, according to another version,
it was presented by Leonid Brezhnev as a token of gratitude. Hack
initially exhibited the painting at home, then transferred it to the
museum of the city of Ludwigshafen. In 2015, the collector's heirs took
the painting and sold it at Sotheby's for $42 million two years later.
Kommersant recalculated the cost of the painting by the number of words
in Lenin's letter and ironically writes: "It turns out that Lenin's word
costs almost a million, and the letter goes for 200 thousand."
In
1980-1992, the artist Yuri Korolev headed the Tretyakov Gallery. He took
up the issue of expanding the exposition area due to the increased
number of visitors. In 1983, construction work began, two years later
the depository was put into operation - a repository of works of art and
restoration workshops. In 1986, the reconstruction of the main building
began according to the designs of architects Igor Vinogradsky, G. V.
Astafiev and B. A. Klimov. In 1989, a new building was erected on the
south side of the main building, where a conference hall, an information
and computing center, a children's studio and exhibition halls were
placed. The building was called the "Engineering Corps" because most of
the engineering systems and services were concentrated in it.
In
1985, the State Art Gallery on Krymsky Val was merged with the Tretyakov
Gallery and formed the New Tretyakov Gallery together with the Central
House of Artists. After that, it was decided to place a collection from
ancient times to the 1910s in the old museum building in Lavrushinsky
Lane, and the art of the 20th century in the building on Krymsky Val.
From 1986 to 1995 the complex of the old Tretyakov Gallery was
closed for major reconstruction. The only exposition area of the museum
for this decade was the building on Krymsky Val, where the main exhibits
were transferred from the main building. During this decade, the
Tretyakov Gallery included Moscow memorial institutions: the
house-museums of Viktor Vasnetsov, Apollinary Vasnetsov, Anna Golubkina
and Pavel Korin, as well as the church-museum of Nicholas in Tolmachi,
which restored church services since 1997. In 1999, the icon "Our Lady
of Vladimir" was moved there.
The museum carries out active exhibition activity.
Thus, in 2016, an exhibition of works by Valentin Serov was held in the
building of the New Tretyakov Gallery, which featured more than 250
paintings by the artist, including those from foreign museums and
private collections. Over 400,000 people visited the exhibition during
its existence. According to the museum's press service, Serov's
exhibition has become the most attended art event in the last 50 years,
for which many hours of queues lined up - the museum management set up
field kitchens to feed people with hot food. According to Milena Orlova,
editor-in-chief of The Art Newspaper Russia, the exhibition owes its
success to the activities of museum director Zelfira Tregulova, as well
as to the choice of exhibited paintings - many of Serov's paintings were
first brought to Russia from private collections.
An exhibition
of paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky held in the same year in the New
Tretyakov Gallery was visited by about 5.5 thousand people a day. The
museum displayed more than two hundred exhibits: 200 paintings and 55
works of graphics, porcelain items, personal documents, ship models.
According to some reports, the success of the Aivazovsky exhibition
broke the records of the exhibition of Serov's paintings.
In
2013, the Russian architectural bureau SPEECH won a closed competition
to develop a concept for the architectural and artistic image of the
facades of the new museum complex. The building, located on
Kadashevskaya Embankment next to the main building of the gallery,
should be completed in 2018. According to the project, the new building
of the Tretyakov Gallery will be 4-5 floors high, and the total area
will be about 35.1 thousand m².
In 2017, the Tretyakov Gallery
presented a new concept for the development of the museum. The project
was carried out jointly with the British companies Event Communications
and AEA (English) Russian, which operate in the museum and exhibition
design market. In accordance with the project, the exhibition complex on
Krymsky Val was renamed the New Tretyakov Gallery, and the museum
developed a new logo and website.
In August 2018, it became known
that the workshop of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, located at 6 Sretensky
Boulevard, became part of the Tretyakov Gallery. According to Emilia
Kabakov, an additional exhibition space of contemporary art will be
organized in the workshop.
On January 27, 2019, during working
hours, Arkhip Kuindzhi’s painting “Ai-Petri. Crimea". The next day, she
was found uninjured, and the kidnapper was arrested. In the wake of this
incident, a new security system was installed in the Tretyakov Gallery.
Also in February 2019, in connection with the upcoming exhibition of
works by Ilya Repin, the Tretyakov Gallery signed an additional contract
with the National Guard. The department undertakes to install an
additional guard post in the building of the Tretyakov Gallery on
Krymsky Val.
According to Vladislav Kononov, Director of the
Department of Museums of the Ministry of Culture, on February 27, 2019,
the non-profit fund created at the Tretyakov Gallery for 2017-2018
transferred more than 2.6 billion rubles to support the activities and
statutory goals of the museum. According to Kononov, such funds should
be created at every museum.
In April 2020, amid the lockdown
caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Tretyakov Gallery for the first
time published a complete photo archive of its exhibitions. Photos from
47 expositions were posted on the Yandex. Collections. Losses of the
gallery for three months of downtime in terms of quarantine amounted to
2.7 million euros
Ilya Ostroukhov (1905-1913)
Igor Grabar (1913-1925)
Nikolay Shchekotov (1925-1926)
Alexey Shchusev (1926-1929)
Michael
Christie (1930-1939)
Polikarp Lebedev (1939-1941)
Alexander
Zamoshkin (1941-1951)
Boris Ioganson (1951-1954)
Polikarp Lebedev
(1954-1979)
Yuri Korolev (1980-1992)
Valentin Rodionov (1993-2009)
Irina Lebedeva (2009-2015)
Zelfira Tregulova (2015—2023)
Elena
Pronicheva (since 2023)