Abstract

P.M. Tretyakov's relations with the artists whose works he acquired for his gallery constitute a vast subject, one that illuminates many aspects of the collector's life, his understanding of art and of the age in which he lived, and his aesthetic predilections. The history of the acquisition of a given artist's works for the gallery, the place Tretyakov assigned those works within the display, together with correspondence and memoirs that shed light on the formation of his collection — all this makes it possible to reconstruct the collector's attitude toward the oeuvre of particular masters. Consideration of these facets of Tretyakov's activity also leads to a more complex task: the reconstruction of the role and place of each painter represented in the gallery he created within the broader history of Russian art. Tretyakov singled out the artistic achievement of V.M. Vasnetsov, highly esteemed the latter's decision to participate in the decoration of St. Vladimir's Cathedral in Kiev, and supported the artist over many years of his life. Despite the ambivalent response of Vasnetsov's contemporaries to his work, Tretyakov purchased his paintings and readily accepted them as gifts. By the end of the collector's life, the gallery's Vasnetsov holdings — a veritable "monographic ensemble" — numbered dozens of paintings and graphic works. There are ample grounds for concluding that Tretyakov was among the first to appreciate, at the proper moment, the originality of Vasnetsov's artistic language both in ecclesiastical mural painting and in the fairy-tale and bylina mode of late nineteenth-century Russian art. An analysis of the gallery display, and of the Vasnetsov room in particular, permits us to speak of Tretyakov's deliberate and nonrandom final decision. It also testifies both to the collector's attitude toward Vasnetsov's art and to his high estimation of the painter's place within the artistic culture of his own day, as well as within the broader moving from realism toward symbolism and Art Nouveau.