Sergei Shchukin, Russian Art Collector 26/09/2023, 10:31

Greatest Art Collectors Series:

Sergei Shchukin
Biography of Russian Art Collector of Post-Impressionist Paintings: Patron of Matisse.

Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936)

The Russian textile magnate Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin is famous for his
magnificent collection of modern art, featuring the greatest Post-Impressionist
painters, including: the Fauvists Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Andre Derain
(1880-1954), the Cubist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), the expressionist Vincent
Van Gogh (1853-90), the colourist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), the neo-
impressionist Paul Signac (1863-1935), and members of the Ecole de Paris like
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), and Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). He also
bought a number of outstanding Impressionist paintings by Paul Cezanne
(1839-1906), Claude Monet (1840-1926), and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-
1919). Shchukin is known for his particularly close association with Matisse,
Sergei Shchukin. One of the great
Russian art collectors of French who helped to decorate his Moscow mansion and also painted his seminal
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, La Danse (1910), especially for Shchukin. An earlier study of La
paintings, notably the works of the
Fauvist painter Henri Matisse. Danse (1909) is in The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York. Shchukin also
bought Matisse's celebrated work Harmony in Red (1908). In 1918, Shchukin
WHAT IS ART? fled Russia, and his art collection was confiscated by the Bolshevik
For a guide to the different,
categories/meanings of visual
government. The collection was later divided between the Hermitage Gallery in
arts, see: Definition of Art. St Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow - a fate which also befell the
For a list of different categories, collection of his fellow countryman Ivan Morozov (1871-1921). For another
see: Types of Art.
Russian patron of the arts, see: Savva Mamontov (1841-1918).
WORLD'S GREATEST COLLECTORS
Pavel Tretyakov (1832-1898)
Greatest collector of Russian artists.
Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924)
Renaissance, Dutch Baroque collector.
Solomon R Guggenheim (1861-1949)
US art collector, museum-founder.
Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939)
First modern dealer in Paris.
Dr Albert C Barnes (1872-1951)
America's greatest art collector.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942)
Founder of the Whitney Museum.
Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947)
Collector, Impressionist paintings.
Duncan Phillips (1886-1966)
Founder of Phillips Collection.
Paul Guillaume (1891-1934)
Collector of Ecole de Paris pictures.
J Paul Getty (1892-1976)
Oil tycoon, art/antiquities collector.
Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979)
Collected modern abstract art.
Leo Castelli (1907-99)
Leading New York art dealer.
Charles Saatchi (b.1943)
Collects contemporary art.

WORLD'S BEST MUSEUMS Biography

For details of the greatest galleries
and arts venues, see:
Best Art Museums. The second half of the 19th century in Russia witnessed several important
changes. In 1861, serfdom was abolished, and the country then underwent a
WORLD'S GREATEST ARTWORKS
For a list of the Top 10 painters/ period of rapid industrialization under Czar Alexander III (ruled 1881-94),
sculptors: Best Artists of All Time. which saw the emergence of a new generation of Russian merchants. Among
For the best oils/watercolours,
see: Greatest Paintings Ever. them were a number of culturally aware individuals, like the Morozovs,
Shchukins, Tretyakovs and Ryabushinskys, who (like the noblemen
FINE ARTS Rumyantsev, Yusupov and Golitsyn) had a passion for fine art.
See our guide to the art of
Painting (oils/watercolours), or
Sculpture (marble/bronze), or Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin was born in Moscow, the third son in a family of ten.

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Sergei Shchukin, Russian Art Collector 26/09/2023, 10:31

Printmaking (etching/lithography). His father Ivan Vassilievich Shchukin was a self-made textile millionaire, while
his mother Ekaterina Botkin came from a family of established Moscow
merchants. In 1878, after a period of industrial training and study abroad,
Shchukin joined the family textile firm. Over the next 10-12 years, a
combination of hard work and business acumen made him one of the most
respected textile traders in Moscow. Meanwhile, his marriage to Lydia Ivanovna
Koreneva was blessed with four children, and he and his family moved into the
historical Trubetzkoy Palace, bought for him by his father.

Starts Collecting Art

By the early 1890s he was developing an interest in art (his brothers were also
collectors), although his serious collecting career didn't start until 1897, when
he made a business trip to Paris. He visited the gallery of the elderly French
picture dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922) where he bought Lilacs at
Argenteuil (1873, Pushkin Museum) by Monet.

So began Shchukin's devotion to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. He

was drawn in particular to the works of Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, Gauguin,
Monet and Renoir, although his collecting developed in stages. Up to 1904 he
collected mostly Monets; during the period 1904-10 he purchased works by
Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh - (he was devastated in
1906 when he was unable to get to the big Cezanne retrospective in Paris);
and between 1908 and 1914 he focused on Post-Impressionist painting by
Matisse and Picasso.

Matisse

His collecting activities may also have been affected by a number of tragedies
that descended on Shchukin's family during the period 1907-1914. In 1905,
one of his children drowned in the Moskva river; in 1907, his wife died; in
1908, his brother Ivan committed suicide; and finally in 1910 a second child
also committed suicide. In response, Shchukin became a manic collector. It was
around 1908 that he met and made the acquaintance of Matisse, from whom
he eventually bought a total of 37 paintings - including some of his greatest-
ever works. In 1909-10, he commissioned two enormous decorative panels
(Dance and Music) from Matisse, for the staircase of his Muscovite mansion,
and in 1911 brought the artist to Moscow in order to supervise their
installation.

Picasso

During the late 1900s, as well as Matisse, Shchukin was also drawn to the
abstract paintings being produced by Picasso. Indeed, he was the only regular
customer of Picasso's dealer Daniel Kahnweiler (1884-1979) for Cubist works
by the artist in the run-up to the First World War. By 1914, his 'Picasso gallery'
contained 50 paintings by the Spaniard: most are examples of Cubism, but as
well as this non-objective art it also featured several works from Picasso's
'Blue' and 'Rose' periods. From 1909, Shchukin opened his house to the public,
who were able to view his collection of French avant garde art without charge.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 severed all contact between Shchukin and
his dealers. His art career was over. Fortunately love blossomed. In 1915, he
met and later married Nadejda Affanassievna, an attractive divorcee with
whom he had a daughter. In 1918, amid the chaos and uncertainty of the
February Revolution, the abdication of Czar Nicholas II, and the Bolshevik
takeover, Shchukin and his family manage to leave Russia for Paris, where he
died in 1936, at the age of 82.

The Shchukin Art Collection

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Sergei Shchukin, Russian Art Collector 26/09/2023, 10:31

Over the course of 20 years, from 1895 to 1914, Shchukin amassed a holding
of some 264 paintings, including: 50 Picassos, 38 Matisses, 16 Derains, 16
Gauguins, 13 Monets, 9 Marquets, 8 Cezannes, and 7 Rousseaus. According to
Alfred Barr, founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
Shchukin put together "the greatest collection, public or private, in the world"
of contemporary French painting.

A few months after Shchukin's departure from Russia, his Moscow mansion,
together with his scintillating art collection, was expropriated by the Soviet
State, and transformed into the First Museum of Modern Western Art. In 1928
this became the State Museum of Modern Western Art, later closed in 1948 by
Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's culture chief. Its collection was divided between the
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow (84 works) and the State Hermitage
Museum in St. Petersburg (149 works), as well as institutions in Baku (2
works) and Odessa (1 work).

Art Collections of Petr and Dmitry Shchukin

The art collections of his brothers Petr and Dmitry Shchukin also ended up in
government hands. In 1905, Petr Shchukin donated his entire collection of
decorative art – a total of 40,000 items, including ancient Russian icons,
jewellery, samovars, carpets, crockery and other rare objects of Russian art -
together with the building where they were kept – to the State History
Museum. In 1918, the Bolsheviks expropriated the collection of Old Masters,
sculptures, bronze, and glassware, assembled by Dmitry Shchukin. It too was
divided between a number of institutions.

• For more about Russian art collectors and their collections, see: Homepage.

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