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Western paintings must have deeply
impressed Peter the Great when he visited the West. He purchased many paintings
by Dutch masters, which he preferred, and founded a gallery in Saint Petersburg
to show those which he did not keep in the palace. He engaged many foreign
painters and architects and sent them to Russia. Outstanding among them were
Gsel, Caravaque, Tannauer, Toiuet, Lagrenee, Groot, Rolari, Liuders, Lampi,
Roslin, Ericksen, Terelli, Valeriani, Lorrian, Moreau, Velli, etc., to build,
paint, and teach Russians their art. At the same time several painters went
with those who received scholarships to study architecture abroad. Among the
first to go were Nikitin, Michurin, Mordvinov, and Zakharov. They went to
France and then to Italy, and were soon followed by others. Most of the first
foreigners were portrait painters, and their Russian pupils were also mainly
interested in portraiture. The centuries-old tradition of iconography, which
was essentially portrait painting, must have influenced their choice. Hardly
anything but an icon, an embroidered towel, or sometimes a carpet, had ever
hung on the walls of a Russian home.
But deeper changes also affected the upper levels of Russian society. Though
still far from understanding the western way of life, and even farther from
understanding Western artistic preferences; nevertheless the Russian nobility
was eager to copy Parisian aristocrats about whom they had started to learn.
From early times the Russian nobility had an established reputation as big
spenders, and they did not spare expense to make themselves look like those in
the West. Shoes, shirts, dresses, coats, wigs, jewelry, etc., were imported or
copied from Parisian originals. This all happened almost overnight, and Peter
the Great no longer needed to use his scissors, as he had earlier, to shorten
the long caftans (coats) and trim the beards of his boyars. They did so
themselves now and since portrait painting was the art which they best
understood, many wanted portraits to hang on their walls. After all, they knew,
that the Emperor himself painted many portraits, and they had already heard
that foreigners decorated their walls with pictures. It took more time for the
Russian nobility to get used to the paintings depicting historical subjects
that appeared for the first time in homes in Saint Petersburg early in the 18
Th century. There was no interest in landscapes, nor in nature morte or in the
seascapes that were so admired by the emperor.
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