Introduction

The Russian museum is quite justly called a treasurehouse of art. Today it possesses more than 400,000 items making it the leading state-owned collection of national work of art in Russia. The decree which established this "special institution", to be known as " the Russian Museum of Alexander III" was signed by the last tsar, Nicholas II, on 13 April 1895. That same act of legislation determined that the paintings and sculptures would be housed in one of St petersburg's  most attractive buildings-the Mikhailovsky Palace, constructed in 1819-25 by the celebrated architect Carlo Rossi. Thus, from the moment of its foundation, the Russian Museum was intended to become a centre in which all spheres of the nation's artistic culture were to be represented: painting, sculpture, graphic art, applied art, ethnographic and historical collections embracing all the country's known past-from the pre-Mongol era to the present-day. This tradition is what makes the Russian museum unique, setting it apart from, say, the Tretyakov Gallery, where threr are no department of applied or folk art.

The Russian museum possesses one of the world's largest collections of icons. The secular painting in the museum collection reflects all the stages in the formation and flourishing of the national artistic achool. There is arguably no other collection in Russia which represents the initial stage in the formation of the national painting tradition - the age peter the Great, the late seventeenth and first quarter of the eighteenth century-so fully as the Russian Museum.

The Russian portrait traditions were developed further in the works of the greatest painters in the last third of the century-the Russian portrait traditions were developed further in the works of the greatest painters in the last third od the century-the first Russians capable of competing with their Western contemporaries in terms of professionalism and at times of outdong them in emotional and psychological depth-Fiodor Rokotov, Dmitry Levitsky and Vladimir Borovikovsky.

The eighteenth century is often called the age of the portrait in the chronicle of Russian art, because that was the most common genre. Historical painting had yet to establish a firm tradition in the country's artistic culture. Its development began with the foundation in 1757 of the Academy of " the three most noble arts" and the first Russian painter to work in the genre was Anton Losenko.

In the first half to the nineteenth century Russian painting acquired in ternational authority through its most talented representatives. The name of Orest Kiprensky, Karl Briullov, Alexei Venetsianov, Silvester Shchedrin and Alexander Ivanov became known across Europe. Some of the finest works by these celebrated artists adorn the Russian Museum collection. The second half of the nineteenth century was the heyday of the Russian landscape. The names of Ivan Aivazovsky, Fiodor Vasilyev and Isaac Levitan, for all the strong national distinctiveness of their work, are entered in letters of gold in the world annals of art.

The Russian Museum collection makes it possible to study the pre-revolutionary work of the great Ilya Repin in encyclopaedic fullness, allowing the thoughtfull viewer to assess how the style of this patriarch of Russian painting changed over the course of half a century.

The theme of the nation, symbolically interpreted with an appeal to the historical roots of the Russian people was one of the most important in painting around the turn of the twentieth century. The section devoted to that period in the Russian Museum is superior to any other collection in the country. The inxehaustible stock of national subject-matter provided superb opportunities for the creation of first-rate works by artists of different natures, different stylistic tendencies and different view on life (Victor Vasnetsov, Andrei Riabushkin, Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily Surikov, Mikhail Vrubel).

Outstanding among the immortal examples of painting from the first decades of the twentieth century in the Russian Museum are the large, representative section devoted to the work of members of the World of Art association and others close to it (Zinaida Serebriakova, Valentin Serov). The paintings of the 1900s to 1920s, brought together under the conventional heading of "the Russian avant-grade", from a uniquely comprehensive collection within the Russian Museum (Boris Kustodiev, Nathan Altman, Natalia Goncharova, Marc Chagall). An active policy of acquisition has brought the Russian Museum masterpieces by artists of various creative orientations, which are united nonetheless by extremely high quality (kasimir Malevich, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Alexander Samokhvalov, Pavel Filonov).

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