The Hermitage guide

The Department possesses over 8,000 drawings and watercolours, which include many early nineteenth-century portraits, rare miniatures, and silhouettes; views of country houses and estates, genre scenes, pictures of the interiors of mansions; and also the family albums of the gentry.

The numerous watercolour and gouache views of Russian towns and the countryside, particularly pictures of St Petersburg and its environs, further add to the collection of topographical paintings. The Department also contains rare architectural drawings of buildings in the capital as they were in the 1730s and 40s, and excellent views of nineteenth-century St Petersburg by Andrei Martynov, Vasily Sadovnikov, Carl Beggrow, Fiodor Neyelov, Maxim Vorobyov, Iosif Charlemagne, and other artists, and views of early nineteenth-century Moscow by Fiodor Alexeyev and watercolourists of his school.

Material relating to the military history of Russia includes portraits by Saint-Aubin of participants in the 1812 War; documentary sketches by Konstantin Filippov, done during the siege of Sevastopol in 1855; and scenes from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877—78 drawn by the English war correspondent Dick.

The unique collection of paintings and watercolours by the Decembrists show their places of imprisonment, forced labour and exile in Siberia. Among them are works by Nikolai Bestuzhev, Alexander Muravyov, and Nikolai Repnin. The Decembrists’ theme is developed in the pencil sketches by A. Ivanovsky, representing the leaders of the rebellion undergoing interrogation, and in the highly sensitive and inspired portraits of the wives of two of the Decembrists — Alexandra Muravyova, painted by the Russian watercolourist Piotr Sokolov, and Yelizaveta Naryshkina, by Nikolai Bestuzhev.

The Department’s collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engravings and lithographs, one of the largest in the country, is in no way inferior even to those of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the History Museum in Moscow. It is based on a collection preserved in the Print Room of the Hermitage since the eighteenth century, whose keepers, the noted Russian engravers Gavrila Skorodumov, Nikolai Utkin, and Fiodor Jordan, aided its growth in every way they could. Since the October Revolution the Hermitage collection of Russian graphic art has increased to include over 35,000 works, the greater part of which are portraits.

Early eighteenth-century engraving is represented by the work of Alexei and Ivan Zubov, Adrian Schoonebeeck, Alexei Rostovtsev, and other artists. There are sumptuous albums containing plans and coloured views of St Petersburg in 1753; albums with coronation scenes; and rare prints by Ivan Sokolov, Grigory Kachalov, Yevgraf Chemesov, and Gavrila Skorodumov. All these are rightly considered masterpieces of world engraving and vividly illustrate eighteenth-century Russian graphic art, its variety of trends, subject matter, and technique. Early Russian lithographs of the 1810s and 20s are represented by the masterly works of Orest Kiprensky, Orlovsky, Carl Beggrow, Carl Hampeln, and others.

The collection of nineteenth-century Russian graphic art boasts excellent examples of patriotic cartoons from the period of the 1812 War against Napoleon; portraits by Nikolai Utkin and his pupils; xylographs by E. Bernardsky and K. Klodt: sketches of scenes from everyday life by Alexei Venetsianov and Ignaty Shchedrovsky; townscapes, portraits, and religious compositions by Fiodor Jordan and Ivan Pozhalostin; and graphic works by the Peredvizhniki.

The Hermitage collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints, drawings, and watercolours has great importance for the cultural historian since their subject matter reflects the most diverse areas of Russia’s cultural life at the time.

The Department’s section of sculpture is rather small. Among its most noteworthy possessions both historically and artistically are the bronze busts of Peter the Great and Alexander Menshikov by Carlo Bartolommeo Rastrelli and the series of copper and bronze bas-reliefs made in Andrei Nartov’s workshop in the 1720s in connection with the projected construction of a triumphal column in St Petersburg.