The Tretyakov Gallery -- now often called the "Old Tretyakov" in light of the annex, the New Tretyakov -- is the repository of some of the world's greatest masterpieces of Russian art. Spanning the 11th through the 20th centuries, the works include sacred icons, stunning portrait and landscape art, the famous Russian Realists' paintings that culminated in the Wanderers' Group, and the splendid creations of Russian Symbolism, impressionism, and art nouveau.

The Tretyakov was officially opened in 1892 as a public state museum, but its origins predate that time by more than 35 years. In the mid-1800s, a successful young Moscow industrialist, Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, was determined to amass a collection of national art that would be worthy of a museum of fine arts for the entire country. In pursuit of this high-minded goal, he began to purchase paintings, drawings, and sculpture, adjudged both on high artistic merit and on their place within the various important canons of their time. For the most part undeterred by critics' disapproval and arbiters of popular taste, he became one of the -- if not the -- era's most valued patrons of the arts, with honor and gratitude conferred upon him still to this day.

Up until six years before his death, Tretyakov maintained his enormous collection as a private one, but allowed virtually unlimited free access to the public. In 1892 he donated his collection to the Moscow city government, along with a small inheritance of other fine works collected by his brother Sergei. The holdings have been continually increased by subsequent state acquisitions, including the nationalization of privately owned pieces after the Communist revolution.

There are no English-language translations on the plaques here, but you can rent an audio guide or buy an English-language guide book. The first floor, which houses the icon collection, also holds drawings and watercolors from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Among the many delights here are icons painted in the late 14th and early 15th centuries by the master Andrei Rublyov, including his celebrated Holy Trinity. Also on display are icons of his disciples, Daniel Chorny among them, as well as some of the earliest icons to reach ancient Kievan Rus', such as the 12th-century Virgin of Vladimir, brought from Byzantium.

The second floor holds 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century paintings and sculpture and is where indefatigable Russian art lovers satisfy their aesthetic longings. A series of halls of 18th-century portraits, including particularly fine works by Dmitry Levitsky, acts as a time machine into the country's noble past. Other rooms are filled with works of the 19th century, embodying the burgeoning movements of romanticism and naturalism in such gems of landscape painting as Silvester Shchedrin's Aqueduct at Tivoli and Mikhail Lebedev's Path in Albano and In the Park. Other favorite pieces to look for are Karl Bryullov's The Last Day of Pompeii, Alexander Ivanov's Appearance of Christ to the People, and Orest Kiprensky's well-known Portrait of the Poet Alexander Pushkin.It may be the rich collection of works completed after 1850, however, that pleases museum goers the most, for it comprises a selection of pieces from each of the Russian masters, sometimes of their best works.

 

 

 

 

Hanging in the gallery and in the book, are paintings and images by Isaac Levitan, March, Nikolai Ge (Peter the Great Interrogating the Tsarevich Alexei), Vasily Perov (Portrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky), Igor Grabar, March Snow, Viktor, Vasnetsov (After Prince Igor's Battle with the Polovtsy), and many others. Several canvases of the beloved Ivan Shishkin, with their depictions of Russian fields and forests -- including Morning in the Pine Forest, of three bear cubs cavorting -- fill one room.

There are also several paintings by the equally popular Ilya Repin, whose most famous painting, The Volga Boatmen, also bedecks the walls. Later works, from the end of the 19th century, include an entire room devoted to the Symbolist Mikhail Vrubel (The Princess Bride, Demon Seated); Nestorov's glowing Vision of the Youth Bartholomew, the boy who would become St. Sergius, founder of the monastery at Sergeyev-Posad; and the magical pieces by Valentin Serov (Girl with Peaches, Girl in Sunlight). You'll also see turn-of-the-20th-century paintings by Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerikh (1874-1947), whose New York City home is a museum. 

When you leave the gallery, pause a moment to look back on the fanciful art nouveau building itself, which is quite compelling. Tretyakov's original home, where the first collection was kept, still forms a part of the gallery. As the demands of a growing collection required additional space, the house was continually enlarged, until finally an entire annex was built to function as the gallery. In 1900 when there was no longer a family living in the house, the artist Viktor Vasnetsov undertook to create the wonderful facade the gallery now carries, and more space was later added.