Russian Museum of P.P. Svinyin (1787-1839): the Collection and its Fate

This study is devoted to the personality of Pavel Petrovich Svinin and to the collection that he has created and that had been existing as a part of his Russian Museum from 1821 to 1834. The main goal of the work was to study the fate of this collection and its role in the history of Russian collecting in the first part of XIX century. For this purpose, the following research tasks were set: to study the biography of Pavel Svinin, create a characteristic of his personality, based on the assessments of his contemporaries; to trace the formation of artistic tastes of Pavel Svinin based on his descriptions of Russian and foreign collections in the first part of XIX century; to analyze the composition of the collection of Pavel Svinin and the process of its formation; to reveal the reasons for the closure of the Russian Museum and to trace the fate of the collection of Pavel Svinin. In fact, Pavel Petrovich was one of the first who made attempt to create and open to all society groups gallery of Russian painters, well compared by their mastery to foreign artists. Also, the life and creative way of Pavel Svinin are described, he was a man of diverse talents and interests: writer, artist, collector, diplomat, publisher of the «Otechestvennye Zapiski» magazine. The general development of collecting in the Russian Empire and the most developed countries at the beginning of the XIX century is considered through the prism of Pavel Petrovich's personal perception. In this study, his collection was analyzed based on different criteria, such as the time of creation, the genres of painting and the most represented artists. The main factors that could cause such a short, but at the same time incredibly bright period of the existence of the Russian Museum are considered. Unfairly ignored by attention of historians, art historians and culturologists, the collection of P. Svinin should be rightly noted as the first stage on the way of creating publicly accessible museums in Russia.