Much information on the history of St Petersburg and Moscow is provided by the town views of such artists as the Swede Benjamin Patersson, who lived in Russia for more than thirty years, Karl Knappe, Fiodor Alexeyev, and Timofei Vasilyev. A series of paintings by pupils of Alexei Venetsianov (Yevgraf Krendovsky, Alexei Tyranov, Apollon Mokritsky, and others), showing palace interiors, help trace the architectural history of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. The battle scenes by Louis Caravacque, Alexander Kotzebue, Peter Hess, Auguste-Joseph Desarnod, Bogdan Willewalde, and other painters, record important events in the military history of the country.
The Department possesses over 8,000 drawings and watercolours, which include many early nineteenth-century portraits, rare miniatures, and silhouettes; views of country houses and estates, genre scenes, pictures of the interiors of mansions; and also the family albums of the gentry.
The numerous watercolour and gouache views of Russian towns and the countryside, particularly pictures of St Petersburg and its environs, further add to the collection of topographical paintings. The Department also contains rare architectural drawings of buildings in the capital as they were in the 1730s and 40s, and excellent views of nineteenth-century St Petersburg by Andrei Martynov, Vasily Sadovnikov, Carl Beggrow, Fiodor Neyelov, Maxim Vorobyov, Iosif Charlemagne, and other artists, and views of early nineteenth-century Moscow by Fiodor Alexeyev and watercolourists of his school.
Material relating to the military history of Russia includes portraits by Saint-Aubin of participants in the 1812 War; documentary sketches by Konstantin Filippov, done during the siege of Sevastopol in 1855; and scenes from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877—78 drawn by the English war correspondent Dick.
The unique collection of paintings and watercolours by the Decembrists show their places of imprisonment, forced labour and exile in Siberia. Among them are works by Nikolai Bestuzhev, Alexander Muravyov, and Nikolai Repnin. The Decembrists’ theme is developed in the pencil sketches by A. Ivanovsky, representing the leaders of the rebellion undergoing interrogation, and in the highly sensitive and inspired portraits of the wives of two of the Decembrists — Alexandra Muravyova, painted by the Russian watercolourist Piotr Sokolov, and Yelizaveta Naryshkina, by Nikolai Bestuzhev.
The Department’s collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engravings and lithographs, one of the largest in the country, is in no way inferior even to those of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the History Museum in Moscow. It is based on a collection preserved in the Print Room of the Hermitage since the eighteenth century, whose keepers, the noted Russian engravers Gavrila Skorodumov, Nikolai Utkin, and Fiodor Jordan, aided its growth in every way they could. Since the October Revolution the Hermitage collection of Russian graphic art has increased to include over 35,000 works, the greater part of which are portraits.
Early eighteenth-century engraving is represented by the work of Alexei and Ivan Zubov, Adrian Schoonebeeck, Alexei Rostovtsev, and other artists. There are sumptuous albums containing plans and coloured views of St Petersburg in 1753; albums with coronation scenes; and rare prints by Ivan Sokolov, Grigory Kachalov, Yevgraf Chemesov, and Gavrila Skorodumov. All these are rightly considered masterpieces of world engraving and vividly illustrate eighteenth-century Russian graphic art, its variety of trends, subject matter, and technique. Early Russian lithographs of the 1810s and 20s are represented by the masterly works of Orest Kiprensky, Orlovsky, Carl Beggrow, Carl Hampeln, and others.
The collection of nineteenth-century Russian graphic art boasts excellent examples of patriotic cartoons from the period of the 1812 War against Napoleon; portraits by Nikolai Utkin and his pupils; xylographs by E. Bernardsky and K. Klodt: sketches of scenes from everyday life by Alexei Venetsianov and Ignaty Shchedrovsky; townscapes, portraits, and religious compositions by Fiodor Jordan and Ivan Pozhalostin; and graphic works by the Peredvizhniki.
The Hermitage collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints, drawings, and watercolours has great importance for the cultural historian since their subject matter reflects the most diverse areas of Russia’s cultural life at the time.
The Department’s section of sculpture is rather small. Among its most noteworthy possessions both historically and artistically are the bronze busts of Peter the Great and Alexander Menshikov by Carlo Bartolommeo Rastrelli and the series of copper and bronze bas-reliefs made in Andrei Nartov’s workshop in the 1720s in connection with the projected construction of a triumphal column in St Petersburg.
The Department owns a large and extremely varied collection of Russian artistic ceramics — about 11,000 items — which shows the development of the ceramic industry in Russia in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The bulk of this collection consists of porcelain. The products of the former Imperial Porcelain Factory in St Petersburg (now the Lomonosov Factory) are well represented. Particularly valuable are the specimens dating from the birth of the Russian porcelain industry in the mid-eighteenth century and associated with the name of its founder, Dmitry Vinogradov. These comprise a small cup of 1749, with a vine branch moulded in relief, a painted snuff-box bearing the mark of Vinogradov himself, and also items from Her Majesty’s Private Service (the first large Russian dinner service, made for the Empress Elizabeth) which are decorated with flower garlands moulded by hand.
In the second half of the eighteenth century the factory’s production was extremely varied both in design and decoration, and included dinner services for imperial palaces. The Hermitage collection contains items from some of these services, for example the Arabesque, Cabinet, and Yusupov ones.
Porcelain made in the first quarter of the nineteenth century was of more formal design but lavishly gilded. The Museum possesses only a few items from this period but those few are interesting and rare. Particularly beautiful are the large vases skilfully painted by accomplished artists. Early twentieth-century china is represented by the work of S. Sudbinin, K. Korovin, G. Zimin and others.
The collection also has numerous examples of porcelain manufactured by private factories. These small enterprises, founded at the turn of the nineteenth century, produced goods for the mass market. Almost half of them were situated in the region of Gzhel. The most important were the Francis Gardner and Alexei Popov factories which specialized in the production of small china figures, realistically representing characters from various social classes.
The collection of early Soviet china is very interesting, especially the work of Natalya and Helena Danko, Zinaida Kobyletskaya, and Alexandra Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya, as well as items based on the designs of Sergei Chekhonin.