To get into the storerooms of a museum is the dream of any art connoisseur. Some works of art don’t leave the depository for decades, while others never go on display from the moment they enter the walls of the museum. Below are several such examples from the main treasure house of Russian art*.
Dmitry Levitsky, Portrait of F.P. Makerovsky in Fancy Dress, 1789
Fyodor Matveyev, View of Rome: The Colosseum, 1810s
Alexey Venetsianov, Haymaking, mid-1820s
Karl Baudry, Procession at the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Moscow Kremlin, 1860
Konstantin Makovsky, False Dmitry’s Agents Kill Boris Godunov’s Son, 1862
Vasily Perov, Sleeping Children, 1870
Karl Huhn, A Scene from the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 1870
Vasily Pukirev, Acceptance of a Dowry with a Check-List, 1873
Grigory Sedov, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Chooses a Bride, 1882
Emilia Shanks, New Girl at School, 1892
Andrei Ryabushkin, Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Holding Counsel with the Boyars in His Royal Chamber, 1893
Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky, Mental Arithmetic: In the Village School of S. Rachinsky, 1895
Abram Arkhipov, Washerwomen, late 1890s
Natalia Goncharova, Fishing, 1908
Aristarkh Lentulov, Basil the Blessed, 1913
Wassily Kandinsky, Moscow: Red Square, 1916
Kazimir Malevich, Sisters, 1930
Piotr Williams, Spring: Portrait of Anna Martinson and Alexei Ponsov, 1947
Tahir Salahov, The Colosseum at Night, 1979
Mikhail Roginsky, Communal Kitchen, 1992
*The above article is based on material from the exhibition ‘Seeing the Unknown: Painting and Sculpture of the 17th-21st centuries from the Tretyakov Gallery Collections’, which can be seen at the New Tretyakov Gallery from March 28 to August 13, 2023.
If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.
