Russia in London - exhibition, paintings - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2000 by Miriam Kramer

This month marks the opening of the Hermitage rooms at Somerset House in London. This suite of rooms on the ground floor of the building, facing the River Thames, will be devoted to rotating exhibitions drawn primarily from the collections of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The project, under the direction of the arts writer Geraldine Norman, recreates the decor and ambience of the Hermitage, which was built by Empress Catherine II primarily to house her vast and ever-expanding fine and decorative arts collections.

The inaugural exhibition is entitled Treasures of Catherine the Great and provides insight into one of the world's greatest collectors. Included in the six galleries are jewelry coins and medals, timepieces, Greek and Roman antiquities, iron furniture and other iron objects made at the Imperial Armory at Tula in central Russia, porcelain from the Gardner factory in Moscow, Oriental objects, and numerous portraits. A place of honor goes to a portrait of Catherine by the Swedish painter Alexander Roslin that is still in its original Russian-made frame. The painting normally hangs at Houghton Hall in King's Lynn, Norfolk, once the home of Sir Robert Walpole, earl of Orford. It was given to Walpole's grandson, Sir George Walpole, by Catherine in return for the many paintings she purchased from him in 1779.

A catalogue has been published with essays by Professor Borisovich Mikhail Piotrovskii, six curators at the Hermitage, and Geraldine Norman.