Museums
space This is why the building of the Winter Palace was placed at the disposal of the Hermitage, the name «The State Hermitage» being now applied to the whole great museum thus formed.
BRITISH SCHOOL
The Hermitage is one of the very few on the Continent which contains a special section for English pictures.
Portraiture, landscape painting and satire art in which England excelled , are represented by a number of first-class paintings and prints executed by the most outstanding artists of British School, mainly of the 18th century. A number of 17th-19th century works are on show too. There are also some notable specimens of applied art, among which is a fine group of objects in silver and Wedgwood potteryware . English paintings of the 17th century are extremely rare outside England.The Hermitage possesses several works of this period. These are: the Portrait of Oliver Cromwell by Robert Walker, two portraits by Peter Lely, of which the «Portrait of a Woman» reveals the artist’s sense of colour to great advantage; also the «Portrait of Grinling Gibbons» by Godfrey Kneller, to name only the most outstanding canvases.
The collection has no paintings by William Hogarth, but some of his prints selected from a large and representative collection possessed by the Museum are usually on show.
Joshua Reynolds is represented by four canvases all painted in the 1780-s.
An interesting example of his late work is the «Infant Hercules strangling the Serpents», which is an allegory of the youthful Russia vanquishing her enemies. The picture was commissioned from Reynolds by Catherine II, and was brought to Russia
in 1789. In 1891 two other canvases were sent by Reynolds to Russia. One was the «Continence of Scepic Africanus» , which , as well as the «Infant Hercules», reveals Reynolds’s conception of the grand style in art. The other was «Venus and Cupid»; presumably representing Lady Hamilton .This is one of the versions of the piсture entitled «The Snake in the Grass», owned by the National Gallery, London
Reynolds’s «Girl at a window» is a copy with slight modifications, from Rembrandt’s canvas bearing the same title, and owned by the Dulwich Gallery. It may be regarded as an example of Reynolds’s study of the «old masters’» works.
A fair idea of the British artists’ achievements in the field of portrait painting can be gained from the canvases by George Romney Thomas Gainsborough, John Opie, Henry Rdeburn, John Hoppner and John Russell, all marked by a vividness of expression and brilliance of execution typical of the British School of portrait painting in the days when it had achieved a national tradition. Highly important is Gainsborough’s superb «Portrait of the Duchess of Beaufort» painted in a loose and most effective manner characteristic of his art in the late 1770’s. For charm of expression and brilliance of execution, it ranks among the masterpieces of the Museum.The «Tron Forge» by Joseph Wright of Derby is an interesting example of a new subject in English18th century art: the theme of labour and industry, which merged in the days of the Industrial Revolution.
The few paintings of importance belonging to the British school of the 19th century include a landscape ascribed to John Constable; the «Boats at a shore» by Richard Parkers Bonington; the «Portrait of an old woman» by David Wilki, three portraits by Thomas Lawrence and portraits by George Daive, of which the unfinished «Portrait of the Admiral Shishkov» is the most impressive.
The collection was largely formed at the beginning of the 20th century, a great part of it deriving from the Khitrovo collection bequeathed to the Museum in 1916.
THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY
The Tretyakov Gallery , founded by Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov (1832-1989), a Moscow merchant and art patron, is a national treasury of Russian pre-revolutionary and Russian art.
The Gallery’s centenary was widely celebrated throughout Russia in May 1956. Tretyakov spent his life collecting the works of Russian painters which reflected the spirit and ideas of all progressive intellectual of his day. He began his collection in 1856 with the purchase of «Temptation» (1856) by N.Shilder and «Finnish Smugglers» (1853) by V.Khudyakov. These paintings are on permanent exhibition. In order that his collection better reflect the centuries-old traditions of Russian art he acquired works of various epochs and also began a collection of antique icons. Tretyakov was one of the few people of his time who realised the great intrinsic value of ancient Russian art. He was on friendly terms with many progressive , democratic Russian painters, frequenting their studious, taking an active interest in their work, often suggesting themes for new paintings, and helping them financially. His collection grew rapidly; by 1872 a special building was erected to house it.
Tretyakov was aware of the national importance of his vast collection of Russian art and presented it to the city of Moscow in 1892, thus establishing the first museum in Russia. An excerpt from his will reads: « Desirous of facilitating the establishment in my beloved city of useful institutions aimed at promoting the development of art in Russia, and in order to hand down to succeeding generations the collection I have amassed I hereby bequeath my entire picture gallery and the works of art contained therein, as well as my half of the house, to the Moscow City Duma. By special decree of the Soviet Government, Issued on June 3 1918 and signed by V.I. Lenin, the Gallery was designated one of the most important educational establishments of the country. It was also decreed that the name of its founder be retained in honour of Tretyakov’s great services to Russian culture.
The Gallerie’s collection has grown considerably in the years since the Revolution. In 1893 it consisted of 1805 works of art, but by 1956 the number had increased to 35276.The early Russian Art department and the collections of sculpture and drawings were considerably enlarged, and an entirely new department- Soviet Art- was created. By a Government decision of 1956, a new house is to be built for the Gallery within the next few years.
At present, the more interesting and distinctive works, tracing the development of Russian art through nearly ten centuries, are exhibit in the Gallery’s 54 halls.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
Buckingham palace is the official London residence of Her Majesty The Queen and as such is one of the best known and most potent symbols of the British monarchy. Yet it has been a royal residence for only just over two hundred and thirty years and a palace for much less; and its name, known the world over, is owed not to a monarch but to an English Duke.
Buckingham House was built for John, first Duke of Buckingham, between 1702 and 1705. It was sold to the Crown in 1762. Surprisingly, since it was a large house in a commanding position, it was never intended to be the principal residence of the monarch.
Although King George III modernised and enlarged the house considerably in the 1760s and 17770s, the transformations that give the building its present palatial character were carried out for King George IY by Nash in the 1820s, by Edward Blore for King William IY and Queen Victoria in the 1830s and 40s, and by James Pennethoooorne in the 1850s.
In the reign of King Edward YII, much of the present white and gold decoration was substituted for the richly coloured 19th century schemes of Nash and Blore; and in the 1920s, Queen Mary used the firm of White Allom to redecorate a number of rooms.
The rooms open to visitors are used principally for official entertainment .These include Receptions and State Banquets, and it is on such occasions, when the rooms are filled with flowers and thronged with formally dressed guests and liveried servants, that the Palace is seen at its most splendid and imposing. But of course the Palace is also far more than just the London home of the Royal Family and a place of lavish entertainment. It has become the administrative centre of the monarchy where, among a multitude of engagements, Her Majesty receives foreign Heads of State, Commonwealth leaders and representatives of the Diplomatic Corps and conducts Investitures, and where the majority of the Royal Houshold, consisting of six main Departments and a staff of about three hundred people, have their offices.
THE QUEEN’S HOUSE
The Duke of Buckingham’s house, which George III purchased in 1762, was designed by the architect William Winde, possibly with the advice of John Talman, in 1702.
The new house, a handsome brick and stone mansion crowned with statuary and joined by colonnades to outlying wings, looked eastward down the Mall and westwards over the splendid canal and formal gardens, laid out for the Duke by Henry Wise partly on the site of the royal Mulberry Garden. This garden had been part of an ill-fated attempt by James I to introduce a silk industry to rival that of France by planting thousands of mulberry trees.
The building and its setting were well suited to the dignity of the Duke, a former Lord Chamberlain and suitor of Princess Anne, and of his wife, an illegitimate daughter of James II, whose eccentricity and delusions of grandeur earned her the nickname of «Princess Buckingham».
The principal rooms, then as now, were on the first floor. They were reached by a magnificent staircase with ironwork by Jean Tijou and walls painted by Louis Laguerre with the story of Dido and Aeneas.
Under the architectural direction of Sir William Chambers and over the following twelve years The Queen’s House was gradually modernised and enlarged to provide accommodation for the King and Queen and their children, as well as their growing collection of books, pictures and works of art.
QUEEN VICTORIA’S PALACE
At the age of eighteen, Queen Victoria became the first Sovereign to live at Buckingham Palace.
John Nash had rightly predicted that the Palace would prove too small, but this was a fault capable of remedy. The absence of a chapel was made good after the Queen’s marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, when the south conservatory was converted in 1843.
In 1847 the architect Edward Blore added the new East Front. Along the first floor Blore placed the Principal Corridor, a gallery 240 feet long overlooking the Quadrangle and divided into three sections by folding doors of mirror glass. It links the Royal Corridor on the south, and opens into suites of semi-state rooms facing the Mall and St James’s Park. Blore introduced into the East Front some of the finest fittings from George IY’s Royal Pavilion at Brighton, which Queen Victoria ceased to use after the purchase of Osborn House in 1845.
The new building rendered the Marble Arch both functionally and ornamentally dispensable, and it was removed in 1850 to its present site at the north-east corner of Hyde Park.
THE STATE ROOMS
Most of the principal State Rooms are located on to first floor of Bughingham Palace. They are approached from Nash’s Grand Hall which in its unusual low proportions echoes the original hall of Bughingham House. The coupled columns which surround the Hall are each composed of a single block of veined Carrara marble enriched with Corinthian capitals of gilt bronze made by Samuel Parker.
The Grand Staircase, built by Nash on site of the original stairs, divides theatrically into three flights at the first landing, two flights curving upwards to the Guard room. The gilded balustrade was made by Samuel Parker in 1828-30. The walls are set with full-length portraits which include George III and Queen Charlotte by Beechey,William IY by Lawrence and Queen Adelaide by Archer Shee. The sculptured wall panels were designed by Thomas Stothard and the etched glass dome was made by Wainwright and Brothers.
GALLERY
The picture Gallery,