Christ with Martha and Mary by Mikhail Nesterov (1911). Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, Moscow   

The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow has opened its largest exhibition of the year devoted to the outstanding painter Mikhail Nesterov. Nesterov’s creative work reflects the major features of Russian national character and Russian nature, the exhibition organizers note.

“The content and the depth of Nesterov's art in many respects harmonize with the religious searches of Russian literature and philosophy at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The best embodiment of his art and moral ideals were expressed in his program picture “Vision of youth Bartholomew” (1889-1890), which opened a cycle of canvases devoted to Venerable Sergey Radonezhsky,” the museum’s website explains.

About 300 works from 24 museums of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and 9 private collections are on display at the exhibition. They demonstrate a wide range of creative interests of the master: pictures on religious themes, portraits, landscapes. Besides easel works, the exposition includes sketches for the paintings in the St. Vladimir's Cathedral in Kiev, in the church of the Protection of Our Lady in the Marfo-Mariinskaya Cloister of Sisters of Charity in Moscow and in the church of the Savior on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg. In his monumental canvases Nesterov combined the traditions of West European masters (in particular, English pre-Raphaelites, who followed the masters of the Early Renaissance epoch) with the national style of Russian neo-romanticism, appeared at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Many works are exhibited for the first time after they have been subjected to the most complicated restoration work. A number of valuable canvases and drawings have recently arrived to the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery and will become the true revelation for the public and experts.

© Russkiy Mir. 25 April, 2013

Photo: A portrait of Pavel Tretyakov. Artist: Ilya Repin (1883) 

Pavel Tretyakov, the renowned art collector and founder of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, was born 180 years ago. Together with his brother Sergei Mikhailovich, he collected paintings by Russian artists for over a quarter century, creating the most extensive private art gallery in Russia, which he then offered as a gift, along with the building housing it, to the city of Moscow.

Pavel Tretyakov was the son of a merchant and he received a good education at home. Having inherited his father’s business the young Pavel and his brother Sergei constructed a cotton mill that employed about 5,000 workers.
    
Pavel Tretyakov began to collect Russian art in the 1850s with the intention of donating it to the city. It is believed that he acquired his first Russian paintings in 1856: Nikolai Shilder’s “The Temptation” (1853) and Vasily Khudyakov’s “Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers” (1853). Later he added paintings by Savrasov, Trutovsky, Bruni, and other masters to the collection.

Tretyakov supported talented artists all over Russia and was a personal friend of many of them. He especially admired a number of young realist painters known as “Peredvizhniki” (the Itinerants or Wanderers). The Peredvizhniki artists tried to show the “true Russia” and acquaint common people with art. They protested against academic restrictions and resisted the belief that all art was centered in St. Petersburg.

© Russkiy Mir Foundation. 29 December, 2012

View of the onion dome mosaic by Nesterov in the Church of the Saviour on Blood in St. Petersburg  

The Russian Museum has opened an exhibit coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the birth of painter Mikhail Nesterov. The creative oeuvre of the painter that was connected with religious and philosophic searches of the so-called Silver Age of the Russian culture revealed to a viewer the wonderful poetical world of the Orthodox monasteries and Old-believing cells, fascination of the nature of Middle Russia and the inspired beauty of the national character. The best characteristics of a creative person had found their embodiment in the images of the artist’s famous contemporaries. These works are regarded as the classics of the portrait genre in Russian art.

Nesterov created frescoes and mosaics for the Holy Protection Cathedral at the Martha and Mary Convent in Moscow 

The exhibition includes about 200 paintings and graphic works from the collections of the Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Art Museum of the Republic of Bashkiria, the State Picture Gallery of Astrahan, the State Museum of the History of Religion, the Scientific-Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts, the State Historical, �rt and Literary Museum Reserve Abramtsevo, the Tver Regional Picture Gallery, the Church and Archeology Cabinet of the Moscow Orthodox Ecclesiastical Academy, the State Museum Reverse Pavlovsk, the State Museum Reverse Peterhof, and from the private collections.

From 1890 to 1910, Nesterov lived in Kiev and St. Petersburg where he worked on frescoes and mosaics in St. Vladimir's Cathedral and the Church of the Saviour on Blood. After 1910, he spent the remainder of his life in Moscow, working in the Martha and Mary Convent. 

As a devout Orthodox Christian, Nesterov could never accept the Bolshevik Revolution but remained in Russia until his death in 1942.  

© Russkiy Mir Foundation & Paul Gilbert. 08 April, 2012

Peterhof Palace in 1944, after the destruction by German troops in World War II. The palace is among the museums benefiting from a research project funded by Volkswagen and German government foundations to try to track down art treasures lost in the war.

Volkswagen AG is providing funding of 600,000 Euros ($794,000) for a joint German-Russian research project to track down Russian art treasures lost in World War II, a statement from two state-owned funding bodies said.

Volkswagen-Stiftung, the research-sponsorship arm of Europe’s biggest carmaker, will fund 75 percent of the 800,000 euro costs, with the rest coming from the two German state-owned funding institutions – the State’s Cultural Foundation and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

Russian museums lost hundreds of thousands of artworks and cultural treasures through plunder and destruction by German troops in World War II. The project will bring Russian and German historians and art historians together to comb the archives of both countries, as well as of the western allies.

“We have high hopes that we will not only gain new historical insights, but will also find traces leading to individual artworks,” the Russian museum curators were quoted in today’s statement. “Despite efforts to register losses and our own research, we still rely on assumptions and speculation. This project is a breakthrough.”

The research begins with the museums of Novgorod and Pskov as well as the royal palaces at Catherine Park, Gatchina, Pavlovsk and the Peterhof Palace, according to the statement.

© Bloomberg. 09 March, 2012