Masters of modern art from the Hermitage

Friends – and occasional rivals for acquisitions – Sergey Shchukin (1854–1936) and Ivan Morozov (1871–1921) were two brilliant early collectors of modern art.

Having made vast fortunes in the textile industry, these ‘merchant princes’ spent some of their new wealth on art for their palatial homes in Moscow.

Each acquired superb examples of impressionist and post-impressionist art, including some of the most experimental works of modernism.

On trips to Paris, they befriended members of the French avant-garde and were among the very first to appreciate the artists now regarded as masters. Their personal tastes and approach to collecting were different, although Paul Cézanne appealed to them both.

Morozov owned 18 works by Cézanne. He was also particularly fond of Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard, from whom he commissioned a series of large-scale works, and bought Claude Monet’s monumental Waterloo Bridge.

Shchukin was most enthusiastic about Henri Matisse and between 1906 and 1914 amassed an exceptional collection of 38 paintings by the artist. He filled one room of his home, floor to ceiling, with works by Paul Gauguin.

He also collected works by the young Pablo Picasso, whom he first met in 1908. Although he admitted to finding the artist’s work difficult and alienating, he became increasingly convinced of its significance, stating that it possessed him ‘as if through hypnosis or magic’.

When Shchukin opened his collection to the public in 1908, it became a site of pilgrimage for lovers of modern art and helped educate and inspire a generation of Russian avant-garde artists, including Kazimir Malevich.

Following the Russian Revolution, all private collections were nationalised by Lenin in 1918, including Shchukin’s and Morozov’s.

First run separately, these two collections were united in 1928 to form the State Museum of New Western Art, housed in Morozov’s former mansion.

In 1948 Stalin issued a secret order to liquidate the museum – he declared the paintings to be of ‘reactionary bourgeois character’.

The museum’s contents were eventually divided between the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and the paintings sent to the Hermitage remained in storage for decades.

Today, the Shchukin and Morozov collections are regarded among the finest of their kind in the world and are given pride of place in the museum’s permanent display.