Patron of the realists

The Beijing show Echoes from the Volga River displays representative works of Peredvizhniki art from Moscow-based Tretyakov Gallery. [Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Beijing

show shines a light on Pavel Tretyakov, a leading figure in the Russian art movement, Lin Qi reports.

Echoes from the Volga River is an exhibition that seeks to showcase masters of Peredvizhniki, or the Itinerants, as the group founded by Russian realistic artists was once known.

The ongoing show at Beijing's National Museum of China highlights the life and times of Pavel Tretyakov (1832-98), a leading patron of the Itinerant movement, although many Chinese are likely unfamiliar with his name.

Some 64 paintings of the Peredvizhniki group are on display at the exhibition that was curated from Tretyakov's collections.

The merchant-cum-art connoisseur was responsible for building the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

Gallery director Zelphira Tregulova describes the displayed works in Beijing as representing the finest of Peredvizhniki art from among those housed at his Moscow-based museum.

Born to a merchant's family, Pavel and his younger brother, Sergei, helped out with their father Mikhail's textile shops at an early age. After his father died in 1850, Pavel inherited the business and expanded it.

It was during this time that his fondness for art grew. He started to buy art in 1853 from a market, where he often bought books.

Initially, he bought some Dutch oil paintings, but gradually his preference for Russian painters started to show. In 1856, he bought Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by Vasily Khudyakov and Temptation by Nikolay Shilder. The two paintings are considered the beginning of Tretyakov's deeper engagement with Russian artists that led to the creation of the Tretyakov gallery.