Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin

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Dmitrij Melnikow: Portrait of Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (1915)

Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin ( Russian Сергей Иванович Щукин ; * May 27, 1854 in Moscow , † January 10, 1936 in Paris ) was a Russian textile magnate who became known as an art collector and patron.

Live and act

Shtushkin began his collection activity in a very traditional way with works by Russian realists. After a visit to Paris in 1897, Shchukin bought his first Monet , the Rouen Cathedral . He was mainly interested in works of Impressionism , Post-Impressionism and Fauvism . He later acquired numerous works by Paul Cézanne , Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, among others . The paintings were initially intended for his private home in Moscow. In the years from 1897 to 1904 Monet was the focus of his interest, from 1904 to 1910 he mainly collected Cézanne, van Gogh and Gauguin. Subsequently, from 1910 to 1914, he concentrated on the works of André Derain , Henri Matisse , and Pablo Picasso . Shchukin was a collector who acquired the most daring works of the 20th century not only by Russian, but also by Western European standards.

Paul Cézanne: Mardi Gras ( Carnival ), 1888, acquired by Shchukin in 1904, today in the Pushkin Museum , Moscow

Shchukin was especially known for his close association with Henri Matisse , who created decorations for his house and especially for him one of his most famous paintings, The Dance . Dance is often seen as a key work of Matisse's artistic career and for the development of modern art. Henri Matisse created this painting for Shchukin as part of a commission that included a second painting, Music, also from 1910. An earlier version of The Dance from 1909 is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York .

Shchukin's collection also included numerous works by Pablo Picasso , including many of his early Cubist works, supplemented by some works from the Blue and Pink Periods.

Shchukin's brothers Pyotr , Dmitri , Nikolai and Ivan were also textile entrepreneurs and collectors. Shchukin was related to Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov , who served as an example, if not a role model. Strokes of fate such as the death of his wife, the suicides of two sons and his brother Ivan have radically changed Shchukin's view of the world and his role as a servant of art. On the night of January 4th (17th) 1907 he bequeathed his collection to the Tretyakov Gallery in a will . Then, with the understanding that his collection belonged to the public, he also made it accessible and opened his house to the public in 1909. The importance went far beyond that of a museum. Many paintings found their way still damp on the walls of Shchukin. His house thus also became a salon for young artists and fueled the conflict between students and lecturers in the academies. At the beginning of the 20th century, only the collection of Leo and Gertrude Stein could match that of Shchukin.

However, turn-of-the-century Russian society still considered even the Impressionists to be charlatans, and those who began collecting their paintings gained a reputation for being an even greater charlatan. The critic Jakob Tugendhold wrote in 1914, when memories of the early days of Shchukin's collection were still alive, that the first works by Monet he bought “aroused just as much indignation as the current works by Picasso: It was not for nothing that a painting by Monet became a protest scratched with a pencil by a guest of Shchukin ”.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the government confiscated his collection. Shchukin emigrated to Paris . In 1948 the collection, which had meanwhile been merged with Ivan Morozov's Museum of New Western Art , was divided between the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg on the orders of Stalin .

  • Degas : Danseuses en bleu , late 19th century, Pushkin Museum

  • Van Gogh : Lilas (1889), Hermitage

  • Gauguin : Eh quoi, are you doing it jaloux? (No te aha 'oe fe'i'i ?, 1892), Pushkin Museum

  • Monet : Falaises près de Dieppe (1897), Hermitage

Exhibitions

literature

  • Albert Kostenewitsch: Russian collectors of French art. The Shchukin and Morozov family clans . In: Morozov and Shchukin - the Russian collectors. Monet to Picasso . (Exhibition catalog) DuMont, Cologne 1993; Pp. 35-150, therein pp. 36-83: The Shchukins . ISBN 3-7701-3144-4 .
  • Hunters and gatherers . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1993 ( online - via the exhibition in Essen).
  • Natalya Semenova, André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud: The Collector: The Story of Sergei Shchukin and His Lost Masterpieces . Yale University Press, New Haven 2018, ISBN 978-0-300-23477-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russell T. Clement. Four French Symbolists . Greenwood Press, 1996. p. 114.
  2. ↑ Albert Kostenewitsch: Sergei Shchukin and others , paper Producties Stichting Hermitage Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2010
  3. ↑ Icônes de l'art moderne. La collection Chtchoukine , fondationlouisvuitton.fr, accessed on November 17, 2016

Web links

Commons : Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files


personal data
SURNAME Shchukin, Sergei Ivanovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Щукин, Сергей Иванович (Russian); Shchukin, Sergei Ivanovich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian merchant and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1936
Place of death Paris