The Museum's History
The Serpukhov Museum of History and Art is the largest art gallery in the Moscow Region. It was founded in 1918 on the basis of the rich private collection of Anna Vasilyevna Maraeva, a merchant's widow and factory owner. The Maraev mansion, built in 1896 to a design by the well-known Moscow architect Roman Klein, became the home of the museum's founding collection. Maraeva's collection included more than 370 paintings and works on paper by Western European and Russian masters of the 16th–19th centuries, gathered by Yuri Merlin on the Moscow antiques market, where palace and estate collections were being sold off.
The Painting Collection
In the 1920s and 1930s the museum's holdings grew considerably with items from nearby estates: Raisemenovskoye, Semyonovskaya Otrada, Telyatyevo, and Ostafyevo. It has a unique collection of Russian art, including Moscow-school icons of the 16th–17th centuries and 18th-century wooden sculpture and portraits. Special attention goes to 19th-century Russian landscape painting, with works by Savrasov, Shishkin, Levitan, Aivazovsky, and others, as well as works by avant-garde artists of the early 20th century.
The Maraev mansion keeps and displays diverse collections of Western European painting, from Flemish and Dutch masters to Italian and French artists of the 16th–19th centuries. The museum has works by pupils of Rembrandt, canvases by Giovanni Pellegrini and Bernini, and 18th-century portraits of the German school. Besides paintings, the museum holds valuable pieces of decorative and applied art, furniture, antique books, icons, and sculpture. The exhibits are displayed in the mansion's state interiors, the Fireplace Hall and the White Hall, as well as in the halls of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) and the Abramtsevo school.
Today
The modern museum is actively developing, holding academic conferences and taking part in international events such as Museum Night. It is a cultural center of the Moscow Region with one of the most complete collections of fine art, revealing the history of the Russian artistic tradition and its ties with European art on a regional scale.
8 points
4 km
0 hours
