Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Alba Madonna by Raphael, was bought for the Hermitage by Emperor Nicholas I of Russia
in 1836. It was sold to Andrew Mellon by the Soviet Government in 1931 for $1,166,400, the largest sum ever paid for a painting until that time.

The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the

twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[1]

History

The Annunciation by Jan van Eyck (1434) was purchased for the Hermitage by Emperor Nicholas I of Russia in 1850. It was sold to Andrew Mellon in June 1930 for $502,899.

In the late 1920s, the Soviet government urgently needed foreign currency to finance the rapid industrialization of Russia ordered in the first Five Year Plan. The government had already sold off collections of jewelry, furniture and icons seized from the Russian nobility, wealthy classes, and the church.

In February 1928, the

Narkompros (the People's Commisariat of Enlightenment) and opened an office in Leningrad to oversee the sale. The Hermitage was instructed to sell 250 paintings for at least 5000 rubles each, plus engravings and a number of golden treasures from ancient Scythia
.

Metropolitan Museum
in New York.

The sale was secret, but word was quietly spread to selected western art dealers and collectors that the paintings were on the market.

The first foreign buyer to purchase Hermitage paintings was Calouste Gulbenkian, the founder of the Iraq Petroleum Company, who began buying paintings in early 1930, trading them for oil with the Russians. These works later formed part of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, in Lisbon. However, the organizers of the sale were dissatisfied with the amounts they received from Gulbenkian, so they looked for other buyers.

Saint George and the Dragon, by Raphael, was purchased for the Hermitage by Catherine the Great
in 1772, and later hung in the gallery of portraits of the generals who had defeated Napoleon. It was sold to Andrew Mellon in 1931.

National Gallery (London). He heard about the secret Hermitage sale from Knoedler and Company of New York, dealers which he regularly used for his art purchases.[2]

Franz Zatzenstein-Matthiesen, a young German art dealer, had been asked by the

The Alba Madonna. The latter painting was sold for $1,166,400, the largest sum ever paid for a single painting until that time. The consortium sold several other paintings to other clients, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York.

The sale remained secret until November 4, 1933, when it was reported in the New York Times that several Hermitage paintings, including the

Metropolitan Museum
.

The sales came to an end in 1934, possibly as a result of a letter to Stalin from the deputy director of the Hermitage, Joseph Orbeli, protesting the sale of Russia's treasures. The director of the Hermitage, Boris Legran, who had been brought to the museum to conduct the sale, was dismissed in 1934 and replaced by Orbeli.

In 1937, Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings, along with the money to build a National Gallery of Art to house them, to the United States Government. The paintings were, and remain, the heart of the National Gallery of Art collection.

Other sales were made in the same period, notably the

Russian National Library, sold in 1933 to the British Museum (after 1973 British Library) for £100,000 raised by public subscription (worth £7.6 million in 2024),[4] and The Night Café by Vincent van Gogh
.

In the 1990s, following the

Russian Federation
passed a new law prohibiting the sale of Russian art treasures to foreign countries.

For many years the National Gallery of Art was reluctant to lend the paintings it had bought from the Hermitage back to that Museum, for fear that the Russian government would keep the paintings in Russia. That policy changed after 1990, when

St Petersburg
in 2002.

Timeline

February 1928

Hermitage ordered to prepare list of paintings for sale.

April 1929

January 1930

  • Antoine Watteau, The Lute Player (sold to Calouste Gulbenkian.)
  • Rembrandt van Rijn
    , Portrait of Titus, (sold to Calouste Gulbenkian)
  • Anthony van Dyck, Susanna Fourment and her daughter (sold to Mellon syndicate)
  • Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Philip, Lord Wharton (sold to Mellon syndicate)

March 1930

May 1930

  • Nicolas Lancret, The Beautiful Bathers, (sold to Calouste Gulbenkian, then resold to George Wildenstein. Now in a private collection.)

June 1930

July 1930

  • Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Isabella Brandt (sold to Mellon syndicate for $223,000.)

October 1930

November 1930

  • Adriaen Hanneman, Portrait of Henry, Duke of Gloucester (sold to Mellon syndicate)
  • The Finding of Moses
    (sold to Mellon syndicate)

January, 1931

  • Rembrandt van Rijn, Joseph Accused by the Wife of Potiphar (sold to Mellon syndicate)

February 1931

  • Frans Hals, Portrait of a Young Man (Mellon syndicate).
  • Rembrandt van Rijn, Woman with a Pink (Mellon syndicate).
  • Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of a Polish Nobleman, (Mellon syndicate).
  • Saint George and the Dragon
    . (Mellon Syndicate)
  • Velázquez. Portrait of Pope Innocent X (Mellon Syndicate; the New York version)
  • Sandro Botticelli, The Adoration of the Magi, (Mellon Syndicate.)
  • Frans Hals, Portrait of an Officer. (Mellon Syndicate.)
  • Rembrandt van Rijn, Women with a Rose, (Mellon Syndicate)
  • Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
    , House of Cards, (Mellon Syndicate.)

April 1931

  • Rembrandt van Rijn, A Turk. (Mellon Syndicate.)
  • Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of a Flemish lady. (Mellon Syndicate.)
  • Pietro Perugino, The Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary, Saint John, St. Jerome and St. Mary Magdalene. (Mellon Syndicate).
  • Raphael,
    The Alba Madonna
    . (sold to Mellon Syndicate for $1,166,400)
  • Titian, Venus with a Mirror. (Mellon Syndicate.)

February 1932

Others

References

  1. ^ "Russian will review art sales". LA Times. 9 December 2008. Retrieved 8 February 2016.
  2. .
  3. ^ Walker, 1964, pp 24-6
  4. ^ Metzger, Bruce M.; Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (4th ed.). New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 64.

Bibliography

  • Selling Russia's Treasures by
    Nicholas Iljine
    , Natalia Semenova and Amir G. Kabiri (project directors). MTA Publishing (The M.T. Abraham Foundation), Paris-Moscow, 2013.
  • Prodannye Sokrovishcha Rossii (lit. The Sold Treasures of Russia) by
    Nicholas Iljine
    and Natalia Semenova (project directors). Russkiy Avantgard publishers, Moscow, 2000.
  • Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art : A Gift to the Nation. Harry Abrams, New York, 1991.
  • Serapina, N. Ermitazh kotory my poteryali (lit. The Hermitage which we lost.) Neva, Number 3, 1999.
  • Walker, John, The National Gallery, Washington. Thames & Hudson, London, 1964.