Our Notes & References

An extremely rare publication featuring selected highlights from one of the richest Russian museums and one of the most famous.

The history of the Tretyakov Gallery started in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Tretyakov (also Tretiakov; 1832-98) acquired important works by Russian artists of his day. As the collection rapidly expanded, Tretyakov built a house to display the works, making it equal in importance with the largest museums in Russia. In 1892, he presented his collection to the nation, approximately 2,000 works, along with his private residence.

Pavel Tretyakov remained a trustee of the gallery and from 1893 onwards, he started publishing annual catalogues of the collection under the title ‘Opis khudozhestvennykh proizvedenii gorodskoi galerei P. i S. Tretiakovykh’ [Description of the art works from the P. and S. Tretyakov city gallery]. Since then a number of more or less common publications featuring works from the collection was issued, including one by Knebel in 36 issues (1901-03).

This Geneva edition however seems to be of utmost rarity. We could not trace it in the Russian State and National libraries, neither in WorldCat, KvK, Copac; we couldn’t find any example at auction in recent decades, in the West like in Russia.

We couldn’t find either any other publications by this publisher.

The title suggests that it might have been published before 1893 when the gallery was renamed into the ‘Moskovskaia gorodskaia galereia Pavla i Sergeia Tretiakovykh’ [The Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergey Tretyakov].