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The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, holds one of the world's finest collections of French art from 1860 to 1950. Now, for the first time, art lovers can marvel at the full scope of the museum's magnificent holdings in this field, & read about how the collection was created.
Udstillingskatalog til Hermitage Museet, Sankt Petersborg, indeholdende franske malere
Including many of the paintings acquired by Catherine the Great as well as others added more recently, this book features paintings from 18th- and 19th-century France, works of the Italian Renaissance, Spanish paintings and paintings from England, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium and the USA.
In a memoir, the museum’s longtime director takes the reader on a private tour of this global treasure. Holding one of the largest collections of Western art in the world, the Hermitage is also a product of Russia and its dramatic history. Founded by Empress Catherine the Great in 1764, the stunning Winter Palace was built to house her growing collection of Old Masters and to serve as a home for the imperial family. Tsars came and went over the years, artworks were acquired and sold, buildings were burned down in terrible fires, and still the collections grew. After the violent upheavals of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the palaces and collections were opened to the public. Now, in an unprecedented collection of illuminating essays, Piotrovsky explores the cultural history of a collection as rich in adventure as art. From fascinating intrigues to revelatory scholarship on the collection’s incredible art and artifacts, My Hermitage is a profound and captivating story of art’s timelessness and how it brings people together.
Selling Russia's Treasures documents one of the great cultural dramas of the twentieth century: the sale, by a cash-hungry Soviet government, of the artistic treasures accumulated by the Russian aristocracy over the centuries and nationalized after the October 1917 revolution. An astonishing variety of objects, from icons and illuminated manuscripts to Fabergé eggs and Old Master paintings, entered the collections of wealthy Westerners like Andrew Mellon and Armand Hammer in the 1920s and 30s. Written by the leading experts in the field and long regarded as the definitive book on the subject, the original Russian edition of Selling Russia's Treasures is sought after scholars and laymen alike. Now, for the first time, it is made available in English, in a revised and expanded edition that includes a new chapter on the secret files of the Hermitage, previously considered lost, as well as new research on the sale of religious art, and of twentieth-century French masterworks from the Museum of New Western Art. Numerous color plates reunite long-dispersed works in a virtual museum that illustrates the powerful blow inflicted on Russia's cultural heritage by these secretive sales, and rare photographs and archival documents help bring this buried history to light.
"Illustrated and beautifully produced, Old Masters, Impressionists & Modern tells the story of the Russian taste for French art. Essays highlight such collectors as Catherine the Great, members of the Russian nobility such as the Yusupovs and the Golitsyns, and the early twentieth-century merchant-patrons Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. The book's authors relate how works from these distinguished collections were united at the Pushkin Museum to form one of the most impressive arrays of French paintings outside of France. The book reproduces and discusses seventy-six of the museum's most important holdings, including masterpieces by Nicolas Poussin, Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Camille Corot, Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, some of which are also landmark works in the history of art."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.
Are national galleries different from other kinds of art gallery or museum? What value is there for the nation in a collection of international masterpieces? How are national galleries involved in the construction national art? National Galleries is the first book to undertake a panoramic view of a type of national institution – which are sometimes called national museums of fine art – that is now found in almost every nation on earth. Adopting a richly illustrated, globally inclusive, comparative view, Simon Knell argues that national galleries should not be understood as ‘great galleries’ but as peculiar sites where art is made to perform in acts of nation building. A book that fundamentally rewrites the history of these institutions and encourages the reader to dispense with elitist views of their worth, Knell reveals an unseen geography and a rich complexity of performance. He considers the ways the national galleries entangle art and nation, and the differing trajectories and purposes of international and national art. Exploring galleries, artists and artworks from around the world, National Galleries is an argument about how we think about and study these institutions. Privileging the situatedness of each national gallery performance, and valuing localism over universalism, Knell looks particularly at how national art is constructed and represented. He ends with examples that show the mutability of national art and by questioning the necessity of art nationalism.
"In what has been called one of the most important pieces of investigative journalism ever undertaken in the art world, Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov tell the story of how the Russians stole millions of art objects from European museums and private collectors in the final days of World War II and hid them away for fifty years. The Nazi confiscation of art from Jewish families and occupied countries has been well documented, but the story of what happened to the art after the Nazis were defeated in 1945 was virtually unknown until recently." "Secret "trophy brigades" were established early in 1945, with specific instructions from Stalin to remove art from Germany and ship it back to the USSR on special trains. This operation began while the fighting was still going on and was conducted at a frenzied pace for several months. It was the most prodigious transport operation of artworks in the history of mankind. Trophies were being removed from Germany as late as 1948." "Works by such masters as Botticelli, El Greco, Goya, Delacroix, Picasso, Velazquez, Matisse, Renoir, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, and Degas made their way to the Soviet Union." "It was not until the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union began to dissolve, that it was possible to piece together this story. Akinsha and Kozlov were instrumental in revealing it to the West and in forcing Russian authorities to acknowledge the existence of the secret depositories. The Hermitage exhibited its collection of previously hidden Impressionist paintings early in 1995, but the Russians have been adamant in their refusal to return the stolen things, and the fate of the trophy art continues to be hotly debated."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Mention the French and most minds overflow with symbols of their panache: sensuous velvets, leopard prints, toile, silk taffeta curtains, deep bullion trim, and eighteenth-century furnishings. The truth is, it is difficult not to fall under the influence of the French, whose uncommon grace is inherent in everything they do. Inspired by their rich cultural heritage and the breathtaking beauty of their country, their celebrated approach to living, dressing and dining is as distinctive as their decorating, which is undeniably the essence of French chic. From their rock-crystal chandeliers and Aubusson rugs, to their exquisite tapestries, feather-filled armchairs, and painstakingly carved armoires, the American appetite for French style is endless. Following on the heels of Provencal Interiors: French Country Style in America and French by Design, in French Influences, Betty Lou Phillips delves into the world of design francais once again, illustrating through lavish color photography how, room by room, French elegance remas the creme de la creme.