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The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is among the world’soutstanding museum. Its collection contains works of ancient and modern art, paintings and sculpture of different national schools of Europe and America from the 3d century B. C. Up to the 20^th century A. D. The value of its collection makes it the second largest museum of Western art in our country (after the Hermitage).

The idea of a Museum of Fine Arts was born in the first half of the 19^th century. And in the 1980s some professors of Moscow University founded the Fine Arts Room for students of art history. By the 1869 the collection consisted of 58 plaster casts of antique sculpture, various ancient coins and a few painted Grecian vases. The extension of the Fine Arts Room demanded the construction of a special large building. In 1898 architect Roman Klein began the construction of a museum. The founder and the first director of the museum was Ivan Tsvetayev.

The collection of the museum expanded. In 1909 a well-known Egyptologist, Vladimir Golenishchev , donated a unique collection of Egyptian antiquities to the museum. In 1924 the museum acquired paintings, drawings and prints from the former Moscow Rumyantsev Museum and Western European canvases collected by Sergei Tretyakov, the brother of Pavel Tretyakov. Then some masterpieces from the Hermitage were added to the picture collection. In 1948 the Museum of Fine Arts was further enlarged when it received a unique collection of French paintings. These paintings were taken from the Moscow Museum of Modern Western Art which had comprised the collections of two famous Moscow art collectors of the early 20^th century, Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morosov.

Nowadays canvases from the museum depository which the public has never seen are included in the exposition. So the collection of Fine Arts comprises the following treasures: samples of the art of ancient civilization, as well as of antique and Byzantine art, a fine collection of paintings which includes canvases of early Italian art and the Renaissance art of Italy and the Netherlands. Impressive canvases by German and Spanish artists are also among the gems of this collection. The museum’s pride is the Dutch and Flemish collections of all famous 17^th century masters. The most remarkable are six paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn. The museum possesses a fine collection of French paintings, including canvases by Camille Corot, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and a brilliant collection of the Impressionists.

Let us speak about Impressionists and their paintings.

In April 1874, a group of young painters organized its own exhibition in a photographer’s studio in Paris. Among these painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Edouard Manet and others. First the group was called “Anonymous Cooperative Society of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, etc.” Among the pictures there was a painting called “Impression: Sunrise” by Claude Monet. This canvas (and all the other canvases ) was criticized by the public and by the critics. One of the critics called this group of artists the Impressionists. The name caught on.

The Impressionists became the first revolutionaries in modern art. They showed in bright colours the country-side and seaside resorts of France and the daily life of people relaxing in cafes, theatres and parks and gardens. The Impressionists left their studios and went to paint in the open air. Their colours were pure, airy and bright. The painters wanted to achieve the exact reproduction of light, colour and movements as we see them. The main thing for them was to watch how the subject changed under various light conditions. We can see this effect in two paintings by Claude Monet, “Rouen Cathedral at Noon” and “Rouen Cathedral at Sunset”. He depicted one and the same cathedral, but in different tones: warm yellow pink tones of midday and cold blue tones of twilight.

Another brilliant Impressionist was Pierre Auguste Renoir. He demonstrated a new approach to the portrait. One of his masterpieces is called “The Nude”. It is an ideal of a living woman, not a painter’s dream. A combination of cold blue fabric and an anxious body of the model reminds us of the colour harmony of a mother-of –pearl shell. That is why the second name of this painting is “The Pearl”.

Edgar Degas is different from other Impressionists as he didn’t paint in the open air. But his models are always in motion. An example of this is one of his masterpieces, “Blue Dancers”. The pastel is full of magic blue colours of different shades.

There are also some superb canvases by Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and others. We can say that the collection of impressionist paintings in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is the best in our country.

The Museum of Fine Arts is very popular among Russian and foreign lovers of art. The museum cooperates with many world-famous museums. So masterpieces from the Louvre, Dresden, the leading galleries of the USA and other world collections are being exhibited here .

Another interesting feature of the museum are the so-called December Parties. They were organized on the initiative of the famous Russian pianist Svyatoslav Richter. The main idea of these parties is to combine two kinds of art – music and painting.

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is a remarkable depository of world art; it is the pride of Moscow and Russia.

6.2.3 Identify these terms: plaster, Grecian vases, Egyptian antiquities, prints, Renaissance, the Impressionists, open air, pastel.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1025