List of Western European paintings in Ukrainian museums

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jacopo del Sellaio, Jacob Ferdinand Voet, Georges de La Tour
and others).

Before the year 1917

The museum collections of Western European paintings were formed in different ways. Usually they were based on private collections. The collectors often sold or presented pictures they owned to other owners; sometimes (mostly after the

1905 Russian Revolution
) large collections were sold abroad.

A number of Ukrainian art lovers spoke out against the export of the artistic wealth and strove for its preservation in public museums and galleries. As early as in the middle of the 19th century, in Ukraine there existed private museums and ‘cabinets of fine arts’ in the universities of

Kharkiv University, started the collection of Western European paintings at the local museum. In Kyiv, it was Bogdan and Varvara Khanenko
who in the 1870s began collecting works by Western European artists.

Between the October Revolution and the Great Patriotic War

After the October Revolution, all artistic works located in Ukraine were nationalised and distributed to museums and art galleries, both to the existing and to the newly formed ones.

But the new rulers kept selling works of art abroad. Besides, Ukrainian museum pieces were being exchanged for far less valuable ones from Russian museums. For example, against Varvara Khanenko’s will, the Bolsheviks split the collection of the Khanenko Museum. Some pieces were sold to the USA for little money that was to be spent on military equipment and arms. Varvara’s will was violated once again after her death when the mention of the Khanenkos disappeared from the name of the museum. After that, it was for a long time called Kyiv Museum of Western and Oriental Art.

In 1925-1926, the museum was enriched with Shchavinsky’s collection of the 17th century pictures by Flemish and Dutch artists.

In 1919, Zhytomyr Local History Museum was created. Its art gallery was based on the Chaudoirs’ collection with a number of first-rate canvases by Western European painters.

The works from the stock of Odessa Committee for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquity and the ones from the metropolitan museums formed Odessa Art Museum. It was opened in 1920. Its present name is Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art.

In November 1920, the

Crimean Revolutionary Committee. The section was to expropriate and inventory the art treasures from the palaces and mansions of the Crimean South Coast. In December, the objects expropriated formed the basis of Yalta Popular Artistic Museum where Western European authors prevailed. In 1927, Yalta Museum's collection was transferred to the newly created Sevastopol Art Museum. The same year, the museum in Sevastopol received Simferopol Art Museum
’s entire collection of Western European art that included a lot of valuable Flemish and Dutch paintings.

After the annexation of

USSR in 1939, Lviv Art Gallery
was enriched with nationalised private collections containing plenty of wonderful works by Western Europeans.

During the Great Patriotic War

On June 29, 1941, most pieces from the Kyiv Museum of Western and Oriental Art started being evacuated to

Perugino’s Archangel and Marco Palmezzano
’s Madonna with a Saint.

225 works of art were plundered from Lviv Art Gallery during the German invasion, many of them were destroyed. Among them was the unique collection of Dürer’s paintings.

In Kharkiv Art Museum, only five thousand pieces survived.

Before the war, the collection of

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
and others.

The major part of the objects from Sevastopol Art Museum was evacuated and preserved by its director Mikhail Kroshitsky. After the war, the works of art from Sevastopol Gallery were on display in Simferopol Art Museum for some time, because Sevastopol lay in ruins and the house of the museum had been burnt down.

Only eleven objects of all the pre-war treasures survived in the Art Museum in Donetsk (at that period the name of the city was Stalino).

After World War II

Kyiv and Odesa have the largest collections that exist as independent museums of western and eastern (oriental) art. The Western European collection in Lviv, though as rich and valuable as those in Odesa and Kyiv, is but a department of the local art gallery. Sections containing a lot of valuable works by Western Europeans exist in art museums of Kharkiv, Sevastopol, and in Zhytomyr Local History Museum. A number of important canvases by foreign artists are possessed by the museums of Poltava, Sumy, Lutsk and Uzhhorod.

Works by famous Western European painters in Ukraine

Dnipro Art Museum

  • Batoni, Pompeo Girolamo
    , Time destroying Beauty

Khanenko Museum

Portrait of the Infanta Margarita by Velasquez
Still life with Dead Hare by Jan Weenix

Kharkiv Art Museum

Lutsk Local History Museum

Borys Voznytsky Lviv National Art Gallery

Mikhail Kroshitsky Sevastopol Art Museum

Nikanor Onatsky Regional Art Museum in Sumy

Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art

Poltava Art Museum

Yosyp Bokshay Transcarpathian Regional Museum of Art

  • Hoogstraten, Samuel van
    , Portrait of a man wearing a beret

Zhytomyr Local History Museum

References

  • West-European Painting of the 14th-18th centuries (the Ukrainian title: Західноєвропейський живопис 14−18 століть). A picture album. − Kyiv, "Mystetstvo" Publishing House, 1981 (in Ukrainian, Russian, and English)

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Western_European_paintings_in_Ukrainian_museums&oldid=1214588978"