Moscow - Zamoskvorechye 2 - Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

The THREE Pushkin Museums of Fine Arts: (Mузей изобразительных искусств им. А.С. Пушкина)

The museum is comprised of three distinct buildings. The original building, now exclusively presents the collections up to the end of the 19th Cent (Volkhonka street 12) - Old Masters, Ancient Egyptian art, plaster casts. The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts' building was designed by Roman Klein and Vladimir Shukhov and financed primarily by Yury Nechaev-Maltsov. Construction work began in 1898 and continued till 1912. Opening hours:  TUE - SUN: 11.00 to 20.00, Ticket desk (entrance): 11.00 to 19.00, THU: 11.00 to 21.00, Ticket desk (entrance): 11.00 to 20.00. Closed - MON. Prices: 300 rub. – adults, 150 rub. – students, seniors, free – children under 16. A joint ticket*: Main building, 19th and 20th C. European and American Art: 550 rub. – adults,
300 rub. – students, seniors. *only permanent exposition (without exhibitions), valid 5 days since was bought, no exchange or return:

Take photo of the golden dome of the St. Saviour Cathedral from the Volkhonka street 12 building entrance stairs:

To its left as you face it is a separate building (light blue in color) (Volkhonka street 14) housing the Impressionism and Post Impressionism, Modernist and Cubist - up to the present day - 19C and 20C European and American Art section of the Pushkin State Museum (Volkhonka street 14).  Opening hours TUE - SUN: 11 .00 to 20.00. Ticket desk (entrance): 11.00 to 19.00. THU: 11.00 to 21.00, Ticket desk (entrance): 11.00 to 20.00. Closed - MON. Prices: 300 rub. – adults, 150 rub. – students, seniors,
free – children under 16. A joint ticket*: Main building, 19th and 20th C. European and American Art: 550 rub. – adults, 300 rub. – students, seniors. *only permanent exposition (without exhibitions), valid 5 days since was bought, no exchange or return. Not too much difficulty here, though certain rooms, such as those displaying the Impressionists, can get a little crowded. Compared with the St Petersburg Hermitage - Russia's other great museum of the arts - it feels virtually deserted. If you want the place completely to yourself, winter is the quietest time to come; it's very cold in the streets but a very atmospheric time to be in Moscow. Sunday is the busiest day:

To its right stand a third building said to include art works from private collections (including the world’s largest collection of work by Alexander Rodchenko) (Volkhonka Street 10):

The frustration arises from the fact that all three seem to operate independently, and none seems to know what the others are doing. the museum has been divided to three separate expositions - so, you should pay three times to see all its treasures.

The "Pushkin" Museums have little to do with the famous poet; the name was simply changed to honor him during Pushkin Centennial "madness" in the mid 1930's. In 1932 it officially became known as the State Museum of Fine Art. The museum was finally (after a few changes of name in the Soviet era) renamed to honor the memory of Pushkin in 1937, the 100th anniversary of his death. The facility was founded by professor Ivan Tsvetaev (father of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva). Tsvetaev persuaded the millionaire and philanthropist Yuriy Nechaev-Maltsov and the fashionable architect Roman Klein of the urgent need to give Moscow a fine arts museum.

CLOSED (all three museums), Tuesdays - only the Private Collections wing.

Open:

• Main Building: from 11.00 to 20.00, THU - from 11.00 to 21.00.
• 19th and 20th European and American Art bldg.: from 11.00  to 20.00, THU -  from 11.00 to21.00.
• Private collections bldg.: from 12.00 to 20.00, THU - from 12.00  to 21.00. Closed Mondays, Tuesdays.

Price:

• MAIN BUILDING: Adults - 300 rub.
  Students, seniors - 150 rub.
  Children under 18 — free.

• 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN ART: the stunning 19th & 20th century art collection, in the most left separate building (left of the main museum) -  Adults - 300 rub;
  Students, seniors & artists - 150 rub.
  Children under 18 — free.
• PRIVATE COLLECTIONS: Adults - 200 rub;
  Students, seniors & artists - 100 rub.
  Children under 18 — free.
• Joint tickets:
  Main Building, 19th and 20th Cent. Art, Private Collections:

  Adults - 750 rub
  Students, seniors & artists - 450 rub

  Main Building, 19th and 20th Cent. Art

  Adults - 550 rub
  Students, seniors & artists - 300 rub.

Duration: 1 day. The place is so big and there is so much to see. In case you visit the THREE museums - please allow up to 2-3 hours per each of the museum's sites.

Photography: (with no flash) - allowed. No videos.

Nearest metro stations: Kropotkinskaya (Кропоткинская, м.) (Red line), 3 minutes walk, Borovitskaya (м. Боровицкая, м.), Lenin Library ( Библиотека им. Ленина).

Tips:

• Separate these THREE museums and the Tertyakov museum for different days of visit.

• Check the schedule on the museum web site, then you will know for sure what is presented in the time of your visit.
• There are cheaper tickets for Russian citizens and the nationality is usually judged by the language you use in the cashier. So if you  are able to ask for the tickets in Russian, you'll get a cheaper price.
• There are many replicas (especially, in the central wing building). You have to read the captions to discover that they are not original. it goes back to earlier times when it was difficult for Russians to travel outside their borders to see the types of arts that existed elsewhere in the world. Foreign visitors should understand that museum was created for educational purposes, and not as a store of art.
• The top hits: The main building: good collections of art of ancient civilizations, including the Schliemann treasure from Troy that had disappeared for a long period after WW2 (A German archaeologist donated the collection to the city of Berlin, from where it was appropriated by the Soviets in 1945).
• Excellent Flemish and Dutch paintings, including a few outstanding (Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Breughel, Van Dyck,  Rubens, Frans Snyder). Also the collection of medieval Italian art (Botticelli, Tiepolo and Veronese).
• In the left building: the Impressionism collection (Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Matisse, Pisarro, Renoir, Alfred Sisley). Fine paintings of Kandinsky, Miro and Picasso. Many rooms dedicated to sole artists. Spread over three floors chronologically. Head up and start at the top floor. Plenty of originals to be admired.
• Temporary exhibitions are most often excellent. Check web site for current exhibitions: http://www.arts-museum.ru/events/index.php?lang=en
• No need for audio guides. There were not plenty of labels in English - mainly, for the key works. Many other exhibits don't have English signage.
• There is a cafe, but- it is closed to all but staff between 13.00-14.00.
• Weekends could be crowded - in the main building of ancient civilizations.
   

 Main Building:

The ceremony for the laying of the Museum's foundation stone took place on August 17, 1898 in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II and members of his family. The name of the museum – Alexander III Fine Arts Museum – was officially approved. Building work had commenced a month before that ceremony, which was important as by then the Committee for the Establishment of the Museum already had at its disposal a major part of its collections. The Museum was created on the basis of Moscow University's "Cabinet of Fine Arts and Antiquities" which had been set up as both a public museum and one for educational purposes. In it the main stages in the history of art from ancient times until the post-Renaissance era were represented through casts, models, painted copies and galvanocopies. This museum was the first of its kind in Russia. Work to create it had been initiated (1893) by the highly respected Professor Ivan Tsvetaev (1847-1943), who had a doctorate in Latin literature and art history and was later to be the Museum's first director (1911-1913). At the end of 1896 a competition to design the building for the Museum was announced and 19 architects from various cities in Russia took part. From among the entrants the University Board selected Moscow architect, Roman Klein (1858-1924), to build the Museum. It was constructed in keeping with the latest building techniques and principles of museum practice. The design was based on the model of a Classical temple on a high podium with an Ionic colonnade along its façade. The interior decoration combined elements drawn from the various historical periods represented by the exhibits.

Front left gallery with statues at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts:

Back side of the main Building:

Several highlights by rooms:

Copy of the Porch of the Caryatids from the Acropolis of Athens, at the Greek Courtyard (room 14) at the Ground Floor of the Main Building. Room 14. The Greek Courtyard is one of the largest and most beautiful galleries in the Museum, where casts of surviving statues and reliefs from the Parthenon (447-432 BC) are displayed, where there is a life-size model of the Caryatid porch of the Erechtheum, one of the porch of the Temple of Hephaistos above the Athens Agora (market-place) and also a model of the Athens Acropolis:

Statue of Athena at the Greek Courtyard at the Ground Floor of the Pushkin Museum Main Building:

Room 16. The Art of Ancient Greece: The high-point in the flowering of art and culture in Ancient Greece was the 5th century BC, the era of classical Greek art. A gallery which has come to be called the Olympian Gallery is dedicated to the art of this period. The most famous works of that era are represented by plaster casts:

Statue of King Arthur at the Italian Courtyard (room 15) at the Ground Floor of the Pushkin Museum Main Building. The architecture of this Gallery is a free re-creation of the inner courtyard of the Bargello Palace in Florence (which currently houses the city's sculpture museum). The Palazzo, built between 1260 and 1320, served for a time as the residence of the city's chief magistrate, the Podestà, which explains its other name: Palazzo del Podestà. Palaces of this kind, impressive in size, were reminiscent of church buildings as far as their scale and decoration were concerned: they asserted the prestige, wealth and power of Florence's new patrician class. The Palazzo had been erected at the very end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the Renaissance. Exhibits in this Gallery give visitors an idea of these two stages in European culture – copies of works by sculptors from Germany, France and Italy. The reproductions of masterpieces of European sculpture provide vivid illustrations of the evolution of styles and trends in the art of the 13th-16th centuries. Not only do the examples of medieval German sculpture in this Gallery not clash with the main display of Italian Renaissance sculpture but, on the contrary, they help us to understand the great changes which the era of the Renaissance brought with it:

The Art of Ancient Egypt:

The museum has over 6,000 items of Egyptian art, from the Predynastic (4th century BCE) to the Coptic era (4th-7th century). The collection includes examples of Fayum Mummy portraits (50 BCE-250 CE) - panel paintings which demonstrate a combination of ancient Egyptian and Hellenistic-Roman artistic traditions. These portraits were painted on wooden boards and attached to mummies. The majority were found in the necropolis of Faiyum, and were perfectly preserved by the dry Egyptian climate.

Cosmetic Spoon (end of the 15th century BCE) in the form of floating girl. The spoon is made from ivory and is modelled in the form of a nude elegant girl swimming with a lotus flower - Ground floor room 1:

Egyptian wooden Boat - Ground floor Room 1:

Egyptian Sarcophague - Ground floor Room 1:

Statue of Pharaoh Amemenhet (19th century BCE) - Ground floor room 1:

Figures of High Priest Amenhotep and Priestess Rannai (15th century BCE) - Ground floor room 1:

Assyric Winged lion from the castle of Ashurnasirpal II - Ground floor Room 2:

Part of Priam's Treasure - Ground floor Room 3:

Sarcophagus with figures of Bacchus, Ariadne and Hercules (c.210) - Ground floor room 4:

Stele depicting Two Warriors (370 BCE) - Ground floor room 5:

Fayum Portraits - Ground floor room 6:

The Picture Gallery:

European Paintings: 8th - 16th Century:

The museum owns a small collection of Byzantine Art, mainly icon paintings and mosaic art, as well as a collection of Renaissance paintings. Painters represented include Sienese painter Sassetta (c.1450), Umbrian School artist Perugino (1446/50-1523), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Italian Mannerist Il Bronzino (1503-72) and Paolo Veronese (1528-88). Paintings from the Dutch Renaissance and German Renaissance (c.1400-1580) are also represented, including those by painter and woodcut print maker Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553). Paintings of particular note include -

• The Annunciation by Botticelli, tempera on panel (1490s)

See also Russian medieval painting, notably the celebrated Novgorod school of icon painting, and read about the three greatest painters: Theophanes the Greek (c.1340-1410), Andrei Rublev (c.1360-1430), and Dionysius (c.1440-1502).

Andrey Rublev, Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity between 1408-25:

European Paintings: 17th - 18th Century:

This is one of the major groups of paintings in the museum's picture gallery. It includes works by most of the major movements (Baroque and Rococo) of the era, from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Netherlands. Artists represented include painter, etcher and print maker Rembrandt (1606-69), Dutch landscapes painter Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-82), Flemish Baroque artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678); as well as vedute painters Canaletto (1697-1768) and Francesco Guardi (1712-93), Spanish painter Francisco Zurbaran (1598-1664), Bartolome Murillo (1617-82), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Francois Boucher (1703-1770).

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba by Hans Vredeman de Vries, Ground floor Room 8:

Peter Paul Rubens, Bacchanal (Ground floor room 9):

Rembrandt, Portrait of an Old Man (1654) - Ground floor room 10:

Rembrandt (1660), Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther - Ground floor room 10:

Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, Allegory of Faith - Ground floor Room 11:

The Finding of Moses, Pietro Liberi (1614) - Ground floor room 17:

Francisco de Zurbarán, Madonna and Child, 1658 - Ground floor room 18:

Nicholas Poussin, The Continence of Scipio (1640) - Ground floor room 21:

Francois Boucher, "Hercules and Omphale" (1735) - Ground floor room 22:

19th and 20th European and American Art Museum:

The Gallery of Art from the Countries of Western Europe and America of the 19th and 20th centuries is a NEW Department within the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. It opened its doors to the public only in August 2006.

The building at 14, Volkhonka St. was previously the left wing of the residence of the Princes Golitsyn in the 17th-19th centuries, which had been built by the St. Petersburg architect, S.I.Chevakinskii, and the Moscow architect, I.P.Zherebtsov. This building was later lent features in the style of Early Classicism by the celebrated architect M.F.Kazakov. In 1890-1892 it was redesigned to provide rented accommodation and came to be known as "Princes Court". Great Russian artists Vasilii Surikov, Ilya Repin and Leonid Pasternak lived there for many years, as did the composer Alexander Scriabin. When this building was acquired by the Pushkin Museum, it was completely renovated between 1988 and 1993 in order to house the Department known as the Museum of Private Collections. This carried forward the traditions of the original building, where a picture gallery and Classical "rarities" from the collection of M.A.Golitsyn had been on display for the public. In this sense the Gallery of Art from the countries of Western Europe and America of the 19th and 20th centuries takes up the torch, since the history of the assembly of its collection is inextricably linked with the history of art collecting in Moscow and the names of such famous patrons of the arts as Sergei Tretyakov, Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. Twenty-six of the Museum's galleries contain a wide-ranging collection of works by masters of the 19th and 20th centuries. There are whole galleries devoted to individual trends in European art or to the work of a single artist. In a gallery specially set aside for the purpose there are works by the German school of the early-19th century, represented by Caspar David Friedrich and the "Nazarene" painters. Small galleries enable the public to appreciate, in a new light, well-known works by Eugène Delacroix and Ingres. The Spanish school is represented by Goya. A separate gallery has been set aside for members of the Paris salon dedicated to the work of J. Jerome, P. Delaroche and E.L.Izabe Works by French landscape painters Corot and the artists of the Barbizon school - Théodore Rousseau, Jules Dupré, Diaz de la Pena and Charles-François Daubigny seem almost predestined for the interiors of this Museum. Canvases by Gustave Courbet, Jean Millet and Honoré Daumier further enhance this panorama of French realist art. Pride of place in this gallery is assigned to the painting of French impressionists, post-impressionists and masters from the early-20th century: Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, members of the "Nabis" group, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, André Derain and Henri Rousseau.. In a new display it is possible to find works by representatives of other European schools as well and also works of American painters. Alongside canvases by Kandinsky, Chagall and Georgio de Chirico hang pictures by Achille Funi, Karl Hofer, Felice Casorati, H. Grundig, F. Beringer and Rockwell Kent. Works by major European sculptors are also on display – Barye, Rodin, Maillol, Bourdelle, Ossip Zadkine and Hans Arp. Whole rooms are devoted to a single movement in European art or the work of a single artist. There is a special room for the early 19th-century German school of painting represented by the works of Caspar David Friedrich and the Nazarenes. Smaller rooms enable visitors to take a new look at the well-known pictures of Eugene Delacroix and Jean-Dominique Ingres. The Spanish school is represented by Francisco de Goya. There is a special room for the Paris Salon painters Jean-Leon Gerome, Paul Delaroche and Eugene Louis Isabey. The works of the French landscape painters Camille Corot and members of the Barbizon School Theodore Rousseau, Jules Duprd, Diaz de la Pena and Charles Daubigny seem to have been specially intended for the Gallery's interiors. Canvases by Gustave Courbet, Jean-Franqois Millet and Honore Daumier complete the panorama of French realist art.

The first half of the 19th century was characterized by changing and developing artistic trends. This is reflected in the museum's collection. While classicism was still highly regarded, romanticism and realism were making an appearance. The great French Romantic Masters, Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) and artist/lithographer Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) are represented in the collection, as well as European landscape painting reformers John Constable (1776-1837) and Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875). There are also works by the Barbizon school as well as by realist artists such as Gustave Courbet (1819-77) and Jean-Francois Millet (1814-75), and the German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). When the New Western Art museum was shut in 1948, its highly developed collection of French painting from the 19th/20th century was split between the Pushkin and the Hermitage museum. The Pushkin received paintings of rare artistic and historical value covering art movements such as Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Pointillism, Divisionism, Les Nabis and Primitivism. Artists in the collection include Claude Monet (1840-1926), Renoir (1841-1919), Degas (1834-1917), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Alfred Sisley (1839-99), Cezanne (1839-1906), Van Gogh (1853-90), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), Maurice Denis (1870-1943), Matisse (1869-1954) and Picasso (1881-1973). Among the highlights of the collection is Van Gogh's The Red Vineyard (1888, Le Vigne Rouge/the red vineyard) which is reportedly the only painting sold by the artist in his lifetime.

Here are several highlights:

Floor 1 - rooms 8-17:

Eugène Delacroix, After the Shipwreck (1847) or Dead body of Don Juan thrown to the water (floor 1, room 8):

• Portrait of Mme Mariette Gambay (1869-70) - Camille Corot (room 9):

Claude Monet, Water-Lily Pond (1899) room 11:

• "Blue dancers" by Edgar Edgar Degas - room 11:

• Nude (1876) by August Renoir - room 11:

• Girls in the Beach by August Renoir - room 11:

• Water Lillies by Claude Monet - room 11.

• Camille Pissarro - Morning - room 11:

• Man Smoking a Pipe by Paul Cezanne - room 15:

• Pierrot and Harlequin (1888-90) / Mardi Gras" by Paul Cézanne (1888) - room 15:

• Pine Tree in St. Tropez by Paul Siognac - room 15:

Landscape of Carriage and Train - Van Gogh - room 15:

• Prisoners in Prison - Van Gogh - room 15:

• Flowers in France - Paul Gaugin - room 17:

• The King's Wife - Paul Gaugin - room 17:

• Still life with Parrots - Paul Gaugin - room 17:

• Paul Gauguin's "Do Not Work" (1896) - room 17:

Second Floor - rooms 18-26:

Bourdelle - Resting Sculpture - room 18:

Derain - Drying Sails - room 19:

Matisse - Still life in Venetian Red - 1908 - room 19:

Derain - Pine Trunks - room 21:

Derain - Saturday - room 21:

Rue Du Mont Cenis, Montmartre (1914-1916). Utrillo Maurice (1883-1955) room 21:

Picasso - The Meeting - room 22:

 Picasso - Old Jew and a Son - room 22:

Picasso - Acrobat on a Ball - room 22:

Picasso - Woman with a Fan - room 22:

Emil Filla - The Architect - room 23:

Fernand Léger, 1881-1955 - Left: An Infant with a Flower, 1953;
Right: A Bird and a Flower, 1953 - room 23.

Marc Chagall- Artist and his Fiance' - room 24:

Marc Chagall- Night Scene - room 24:

Kandinsky - Blue over Multicolor - room 24:

Kandinsky, “Angular Structure,” (1930):

Wassily Kandinsky, Impression III. Concert (1911):

Renato Gottusso - Calabrian Worker's Sunday - room 24:

Andre Fougeron - Fishing - room 24:

Temporary exhibition (July 2015) - Mihály Munkácsy (1844-1900) - Hungarian painter - Milton dictating the Lost Paradise to his Daughters:

Temporary exhibition - Mihály Munkácsy (1844-1900) - Hungarian painter - Paris Interior:

Temporary exhibition - Mihály Munkácsy (1844-1900) - Hungarian painter - The Candies Thief:

Prints and Drawings:

In 1924 the Graphic Arts department was added to the museum, founded with 20,000 prints which were donated from the Hermitage museum. Today, it contains about 400,000 drawings, illustrated books, engravings, posters, applied graphics and ex-libris prints from all over the world and all periods of art history. Among them are works from great masters including Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), Rembrandt, and creators of Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints like Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and Hiroshige (1797-1858).

Peter Paul Rubens, The effigy of the Virgin and Child borne by angels, ca. 1608:

Private Collections Building:

Between the late-16th century and the end of the 18th, the Church of St. John the Baptist had occupied this place. Later the plot was acquired by the godfather of Alexander Pushkin's brother Lev. In 1804 work had begun on the construction of a two-storeyed town house at the site. Prior to 1917 it had been the property of various aristocratic families. It had also contained the Society for Art and Literature founded in Moscow in 1888 by Konstantin Stanislavsky, Alexander Fedotov, Fyodor Komissarzhevskii and Fyodor Sologub. Between 1927 and 1932 it had housed the presidium of the Association for Artists of Revolutionary Russia. In 1934 the future of the building was again under threat in view of the construction of the Metro station "Palace of the Soviets" (now Kropotkinskaya station). The building was due for demolition on account of its worn foundations, yet, since the arrangements for re-housing the residents were not in place when the time came to build the underground tunnel, it was decided to leave the house intact. Meanwhile the old foundations were removed and replaced with new ones. In 1988 the building was made over to the Pushkin Museum and in 1990 work began on its reconstruction and restoration which took close on 15 years. In June 2005 the Department of Private Collections was moved to a new building at 8/10 Volkhonka St.

The ground floor of the new building houses collections of works dating from the 19th and ealy-20th century. This floor also contains works by outstanding Russian artists of the 20th century: Aleksandr. Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, Aleksandr Tyshler, A. Weisberg and David Sterenberg in a hall specially designed for the display of individual donations. Four rooms on the first floor are taken up with the unique collection of Russian and foreign paintings and drawings which had belonged to the founder of the Museum – I.S.Zilbershtein.

Alexander Rodchenko, Self-portrait, (1920):

Varvara Stepanova, Self-portrait, (1920):

Aleksandr Rodchenko, Dance: An Objectless Composition (1915):

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