Exhibition "Russian Art"

About exhibition

The most complete and representative section of the Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum (NGKhM) — the collection of Russian art — has for several decades been housed in the Governor's House in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin. The collection was formed in the museum mainly in the post-revolutionary years, when works that had previously belonged to well-known noble and merchant families (the Sheremetevs, Orlov-Davydovs, Abamelek-Lazarovs, Rukavishnikovs, and others) were transferred to the museum. This group includes portraits by Fyodor Rokotov, Karl Bryullov's "Svetlana the Fortune-Teller" — the only genre painting in the artist's oeuvre on a Russian national everyday theme — Ivan Aivazovsky's "Shore of Dalmatia" and many others. Several of Aivazovsky's marines are shown in the exhibition for the first time, among them "Storm at Sea," which is being exhibited for the first time after a complex and lengthy restoration. The display of portrait work by Sergey Zaryanko, which consistently attracts the attention of painting lovers, has been expanded. Works by artists of the local Arzamas school — the first private school of painting and drawing in Russia, opened by academician Alexander Stupin in Arzamas in 1802 — occupy a special place in the museum's collection. The museum holds works by many of Stupin's pupils who later became well-known painters — Nikolai Alekseyev-Syromyansky, Ivan Gorbunov, Vasily Raev, Nikolai Rachkov. The exhibition includes many 19th-century works that were previously shown only in the museum's temporary exhibition projects.