The growth of this museum was indeed astonishingly rapid. Its very first printed catalogue, issued ten years after the collection was founded, listed 2,080 paintings, while only a decade later the picture gallery already contained 2,568 canvases. These works formed not a random assemblage of
The rapid growth of the Hermitage in the first years of its existence was also partly due to the condition of the art market at the time. Large numbers of works of art were available for purchase, particularly in Paris, at auctions where treasures once owned by the now impoverished aristocracy were sold off. Agents of the Russian court would attend every sale which seemed to promise valuable acquisitions. It was at one such sale, for instance, that Murillo’s
Much more important for the Museum than the purchase of individual, though renowned canvases, was the acquisition of whole collections, amassed by connoisseurs or art lovers. The first of these was the collection of Heinrich Brühl, bought in 1769 from his heirs in Dresden. Count Brühl, the once omnipotent minister of Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, had been entrusted with the task of acquiring art works for the Dresden picture gallery, and had accumulated an excellent collection of his own, containing paintings, drawings, and engravings. His collection was bought for the Empress, and formed the nucleus of the Hermitage section of Dutch and Flemish paintings, giving it four Rembrandts, four landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael, and two canvases by Rubens. Other schools were represented in the Brühl collection by single works only, but among these were such masterpieces as
The Brühl collection of drawings also enriched the Hermitage, bringing to it 1,076 sheets by old and contemporary masters. Added to the 6,000 drawings composing the collection of the Austrian minister, Count Johann Philip Cobenzl, which had been acquired in 1768 in Brussels, they laid the foundation of the Department’s present section of drawings.
The most impressive was the purchase, in 1772, of one of the finest private collections in Paris, assembled by Pierre Crozat. It included such masterpieces as
Substantial additions came to the Hermitage in 1779 with the acquisition of the famous Houghton Hall collection. Accumulated by Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister under two successive monarchs, George I and George II, it numbered 198 paintings, including