Description of the attraction
On June 29, 1885, the first Russian provincial art museum named after A. N. Radishchev. The choice of the city of Saratov was not accidental, A. N. Radishchev, a great Russian writer, poet and philosopher, was born on a family estate located in the Saratov province.
The opening of the museum was unique for several reasons. In its original form, the Radishchev Museum combined artistic, ethnographic, paleontological, local history, memorial and industrial styles at the same time. Only the capital's museums could compete with the scale and number of works of art, for which the Radishchev Museum got its middle name “The Volga Hermitage”. The doors of the museum were open to people of all classes, and the first day, June 30, 1885, was a free admission day. It is easy to imagine what this meant for Saratov, in those days where the population of one hundred and twenty thousand people did not have lighting, the water supply was only in the central region, there was no decent hospital, the small theater was wooden and could only accommodate a part of those who wished.
The founding father of the museum was the landscape painter A. P. Bogolyubov, grandson of Alexander Radishchev. He donated a collection of works of art for life and regular donations for the development of painting in Saratov. The project of the building was developed by the St. Petersburg architect I. V. Shtrom, and personally approved by the Emperor Alexander III, who also donated a number of paintings from his collection to the museum.
Nowadays, the Radishchev Museum has a network of branches throughout the Saratov province: the house-museum (memorial) of V. E. Borisov-Musatov and Pavel Kuznetsov in Saratov; gallery A. A. Mylnikov in Engels; a branch in Balakovo (where a collection of works from the funds of the Radishchev Museum is exhibited); house-museum (art-memorial) K. S. Petrov-Vodkin in Khvalynsk.
Today the Saratov Radishchev Museum is one of the most successful museums of the European class. The museum's collection contains over 30 thousand exhibits from antiquity to modern times. The exposition features more than 1,500 works of art from the museum's collection. These are: objects of worship and icons, foreign and Russian sculpture, painting and graphics, old books, objects of decorative and applied art of the East and West.
The pride of the museum is the works of itinerant artists: V. Perov, I. Kramskoy, I. Repin, V. Surikov. The art collection also includes canvases; F. S. Rokotova, K. P. Bryullova, A. K. Savrasov, I. K. Aivazovsky, K. S. Petrov-Vodkin, P. P. Konchalovsky, I. I. Levitan, V. A. Serov, K. A. Korovin, V. E. Borisov-Musatov, P. V. Kuznetsov, M. Chagall and K. Malevich, R. Falk, S. Rose, D. Vasari, artists of the Barbizon school K. Corot, K. Troion, C. Daubigny and other outstanding masters.
