Moscow's main gallery marks 110 years

On Friday, August 15th the Tretyakov Art Gallery is celebrating its 110th anniversary.

One of the world's largest art museums, the gallery was based on the private collection of the Moscow's renowned merchant and patron of the arts Pavel Tretyakov /1832-1898/.

The history of his rich collection is closely connected with the so-called Travelling Art Exhibits Society, which was set up 1870 to unite a number of prominent Russian realism artists /"peredvizhniki", or travellers/.

It was the 1st exhibition, arranged by the Society, when Tretyakov acquired the Rooks Have Come by Savrasov, which was to become one of the gallery's acknowledged masterpieces.

In August 1892 Pavel Tretyakov donated his collection along with his brother Sergei Tretyakov's to the city of Moscow. At that moment the collection was composed of 1287 paintings, 518 drawings and 9 works of sculpture of Russia's talented artists.

One of the latest remarkable events concerned with the modern Tretyakov Gallery was the acquisition of the Fortaleza do Pico by Karl Bryullov (1799-1852) this July.

The picture, belonging to the landscape genre, is not typical of the painter's work, and a great rarity. Up to a recent time the canvas had been kept within a family of Bryullov's Portuguese descendants, concealed from the eyes of both general public and experts.