The Tretyakov Gallery Masterworks

The second volume of a six-part survey of the State Tretyakov Gallery gathers 781 portraits by 192 artists, spanning more than two centuries — from the court of Peter the Great to the Soviet 1940s.



Here are the faces that Russia chose to keep. Dmitry Levitsky and Vladimir Borovikovsky paint an aristocracy still certain of itself; Orest Kiprensky gives Pushkin the profile the whole country now remembers; Ivan Kramskoy and Ilya Repin turn the portrait into an argument about character; Valentin Serov can undo a sitter with one glance. Anna Golubkina works the same faces in clay and marble, and her heads hold their own beside the paintings.



Emperors and peasants, writers, chemists, merchants' wives, actors, children and the artists themselves. Large reproductions, each with its painter, title and date.



Reproduced from the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery. This edition is published by Aeneas Press and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Gallery.