THE MAIN STAGES OF THE EVOLUTION OF RUSSIAN PAINTING
In 1940, the circulating exhibition The Main Stages of the Evolution of Russian Painting was formed by the State Russian Museum out of the main museum foods. It included 183 items (144 paintings and 39 drawings). In the beginning of the summer of 1940 the exhibition was sent to Nalchik and Kerch (the temporary transfer statement No 341, dated 11.06.40) and was accompanied by the museum representatives: the director of the circulating exhibition and a researcher, working as a guide.
A year later, in the beginning of June, 1941, after risking several cities in the North Caucasus, Donbass and the Crimea the exhibition was temporarily deposited in the Alupka Museum (the transfer statement No 394, dated 06.06.41) and was opened there for visitors. It was still there when the Great Patriotic War started. They did not manage to evacuate die artistic valuables. The exhibition was closed, all the items were put in packing-cases and deposited in the Alupka Palace. During the Nazi occupation of the Crimea the palace was plundered. The representatives of the Crimean department of Rozenberg's Headquarters, who directed the mass transportation of cultural valuables from the captured territories, prepared the rest of the Alupka Palace's collections for dispatching to Germany. The greater part of the items carried out has disappeared without a trace.
According to the decree (reference No 317-328, dated 23.08.44) of the Committee on Fine Arts at the USSR Council of People's Commissars, which ordered to present "the list of the museum valuables damaged, destroyed and carried out by the invaders", the State Russian Museum composed "The Decision of the Expert Commission on the Value of Damage inflicted on the collections of the Russian Museum as a Result of War". This list included all the one hundred and eighty three items of the circulating exhibition The Main Stages of the Evolution of Russian Painting.
After the Crimea was liberated from the fascist invasion, they started to search for the items of the circulating exhibition of the State Russian Museum. The letter written by the director of the Alupka Palace Museum A. G. Rotenberg of 21.08.44 said that after the liberation of the Crimea they managed to find only twenty five items belonging to that circulating exhibition. The rest one hundred and fifty eight items were considered as "lost" and were put on the list of damages caused by the fascist invasion.
In September, 1944, the special commission, which included the director of the Alupka Palace Museum A. G. Rotenberg, the associate director V. A. Klimenko, the chief curator of the museum E. Ya. Vilchevskaya as well as professor of Moscow State University Sh. M. Rozental and Kandidat of art history A. N. Luzhetskaya, sent on this mission by the Department of Fine Arts at the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars, presented the statement No w/n, dated 27.09.44, where 155 items from the State Russian Museum's collection are listed as lost (at that time the Russian Museum had no opportunity to send anybody of its researchers on this mission from Leningrad to the Crimea).
In November, 1948, the State Russian Museum got a notification of the Committee on Cultural and Educational Institutions about the receiving by the Crimean Regional Cultural and Educational Department of the ten items found in Germany, that once made part of the circulating exhibition The Main Stages of the Evolution of Russian Painting, which had been temporarily deposited in the Crimea.
In 1948, according to the revert statement No 244, dated 11.05.48, thirty five items out of those belonging to the circulating exhibition The Main Stages of the Evolution of Russian Painting, transferred from the Berlin Department of Restitutions, were returned to the State Russian Museum by the Central Depository of the Museum Funds of the Suburban Palace Museums.
In 1951, according to the decree of the Committee on Fine Arts at the USSR Council of Ministers (reference No SP-953/32, dated 06.09.51) two items out of those carried out of the Alupka Palace Museum to Germany during the Great Patriotic War were returned by the State Tretyakov Gallery (revert statements No 341, dated 24.11.51, and No 341a, dated 10.12.51). In the course of the long-term correspondence between the State Russian Museum, the Simferopol Picture Gallery, and the Committee on Cultural and Educational Institutions at the USSR Council of Ministers, it was found that the Crimean Regional Cultural and Educational Department, transferred through the Crimean Regional Museum of Local Lore, ten (in fact, nine) items out of those lent to the circulating exhibition The Main Stages of the Evolution of Russian Painting, to the Simferopol Picture Gallery. Five of them were permanently deposited in the Simferopol Picture Gallery (the Committee on Fine Arts at the USSR Council of Ministers decrees No 574, dated 22.05.51, No 63, dated 19.01.53, the revert statement No 1028, dated 26.12.51). According to the decree of the Committee on Fine Arts at the USSR Council of Ministers (No 63, dated 19.01.53) one item - Portrait of Disterlo (study for The Formal Session of the State Council) by I. E. Repin. - was returned to Leningrad. Three items - Oh, I'm Unhappy... by P. A. Fedotov, So soon, really... by P. A. Fedotov, The Fiancee, Buying a Ring by A. A. Ivanov - later were also returned to the State Russian Museum (the revert statement No 478, dated 25.05 55). One item - View of the Village Mishketka by M. M. Ivanov - was not actually transferred to the Simferopol Picture Gallery and after a long-term search was discovered in the premises of the restoration workshop at the Crimean Regional Museum of Local Lore. It was returned to the State Russian Museum from the Crimean Regional Museum of Local Lore (the revert statement No 381, dated 03.07.53).
In the 1950s, the Russian Museum carried on an active search for the twenty five items which, according to documents, were temporarily deposited in the Alupka Palace Museum. But they did not succeed in tracing their real whereabouts at that time.
In the middle of the 1960s, there appeared some data about eleven more items out of those lent for the circulating exhibition The Main Stages of the Evolution of Russian Painting. As it was stated in letters from the Alupka Palace Museum (reference No 54, dated 20.01.66, No 311, dated 19.08.80, No 99, dated 11.04.85), in 1956, when the Alupka Palace Museum was reorganized, among the items received from the State Dacha (after the Great Patriotic War it was located in the Alupka Palace) there were eleven items from the State Russian Museum collection. As nothing was known about their provenance at that moment, these items were put down on the inventory of the Alupka Museum. At the request of the State Russian Museum (reference No 1342/1-3, dated 21.06.85) all these works of art were returned to its funds (the revert statement No 2659, dated 23.04.86).
In the 1970-80s, the work aimed at the returning of the lost items was continued. Many times the State Russian Museum asked the Yalta Territorial Soviet for Trade Union Health-resorts Management to return S. F. Shchedrin's painting View in the Environs of Naples as well as they asked the Simferopol Museum of Arts to return Night on the Dnieper by A. I. Kuinji which made part of the circulating exhibition The Main Stages of the Evolution of Russian Painting. Unfortunately these works of art have not been returned to their rightful owner up to now.
Thanks to the efforts of the Department of Preservation of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation in 1998, as a result of complex measures undertaken, Portrait of Piotr Basin by O. A. Kiprensky was returned to Russia. In 1955, the Parliament of Austria transferred the valuables which were kept since the Second World War in the medieval monastery Marbach, near Vienna, to the Austrian Jewish Communities' League. It was considered that all works of art gathered there were confiscated by the Nazi from the Jewish people. That is why in October 1996, more than a hundred antiquarian items, the owners of which were not known, were put up to the great charity auction by the Austrian Jewish Communities' League together with Christie's fine art auctioneers. Among the lots presented there Portrait of Piotr Vasilyevich Basin was mentioned under No 385.
The information about the portrait was thoroughly examined by experts of the Department of Preservation of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, all the legal documents needed for proving Russia's rights of property on this masterpiece by O. A. Kiprensky were prepared. In November 1997, the Russian party informed Christie's fine art auctioneers about the history of this portrait and asked for their assistance in its purchasing from the new owner. He appeared to be the American citizen Ronald S. Lauder, a well-known collector, who was fond of Russian culture and arts. After he got acquainted with the history of this painting Mr. Lauder took the decision to transfer it without compensation to Russia. In the days of the celebration of the State Russian Museum's Centenary the Portrait. of Piotr Basin by O. A. Kiprensky was brought from the USA to St. Petersburg and - after 58 years! - took its place in the museum's exposition.
Thus in present days out of one hundred and eighty three items of the circulating exhibition The Main Stages of the Evolution of Russian Painting (1940-1941), fifty four works of art were returned to the funds of the State Russian Museum. The search is still going on. We hope that in a very short time its documentary chronicle will be augmented with new reports on the return of museum valuables lost in the years of the Second World War.
S. A. Yanchenko,
Chief Registrar of the State Russian Museum