ART
Life in the Name
of the National Art
The visits of Pavel Mikhailovich to the
artists had always been an exciting event, and
all of them, whether the eminent ones or the
beginners, with a degree of emotion waited
Tretyakov's gentle comment: "Please let me
take care of the picture", which was
equivalent to the public recognition. He
supported the new, the fresh and, thanks to
him, the names of Repin, Vasnetsov, Levitan
and of many others became known...
The scope of the activities in collecting
and the spacious mind of P.M. Tretyakov were
truly amazing. Every year, starting from 1856,
dozens or even hundreds of works flowed into
his gallery. Tretyakov, despite his prudence,
stopped at nothing when it was in the interest
of his business, even if the expenses were high.
Tretyakov clearly understood that the
museum he'd been creating should not only
correspond to his personal (or someone
else's) taste and sympathies, but rather to
reflect an objective picture of the
development of Russian art. Maybe this was
exactly the reason why Tretyakov the
collector, compared to the other private
collectors, was increasingly more free of
limitations and narrowness in taste. Each new
decade was bringing new names and new
trends to his collection. The tastes of the
museum creator were developing and evolving
along with the art itself. At the same time, he
was afraid of violation of the collection
integrity, that had been created in the heyday
of the realistic art. He walked alone through
the halls of his native gallery for a long time,
stopping near one or another painting. For
him, as well as for Ge, and for the other artists,
the gallery was “alive”. And undoubtedly, when
22
SUNRISE
he was looking at the paintings, he not only
enjoyed painting, but also recalled the
associated with it “days of suffering and joy,
and everything that the dear friends
experienced, those ones who already died and
those who were still alive. ”, as Ge wrote then.
At f i r s t , e v e r y t h i n g t h a t P a v e l
Mikhaylovich Tretyakov acquired was placed in
the rooms of his residential house in
Lavrushinsky Lane, bought by the Tretyakov's
family in the early 1850s. However, yet by the
end of the 1860s there were so many paintings,
that there was no way to place them all in the
rooms.
With the acquisition of a large Turkestan
Series of paintings and etudes created by V. V.
Vereshchagin, the issue of construction of a
special building of an art gallery was resolved
in a natural way. In 1872, the construction
began, and in the spring of 1874 the paintings
were moved to the two-story building, the first
premise of the Tretyakov Gallery, consisting of
two large halls. It was given the status of a real
museum, the privately owned, but being public
in nature, the museum that was free and open
throughout almost all days of the week for any
visitor with no limitation on gender or rank. In
1892, Tretyakov donated his museum to the
city of Moscow.
February 2019 №2