Rosalind P. Blakesley

Catalog of a large exhibit at the (British) National Portrait Gallery of portraits from the Treyakov State Gallery in Moscow, celebrating the founding of both galleries in 1856. The Tretyakov was initially the private gallery of a wealthy Russian art patron who hired the best Russian artists of the day to paint portraits of all the distinguished cultural figures --writers, composers, actors and so on of the late 19th and early twentieth century. The book form also includes earlier background material from Russia's modernization by Peter the Great up through the 18th and early 19th century before the founding of the gallery. I bought the catalog while seeing the exhibition March 12. 2016.… (meer)