Collecting Art: Morozov and the Russian Art Connoisseurs


09/22/2021

On display at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris this fall, the Morozov collection is one of most remarkable, yet not the only one of its kind: the collection is in keeping with a long tradition of Russian art connoisseurs.



by Emmanuel Ducamp

Valentin Serov (1865–1911), Portrait du collectionneur Ivan Morozov (Portrait of the Collector Ivan Morozov, 1910), tempera on cardboard, 63.5 x 77 cm/25 x 30.31 in. Tretyakov National Gallery, Moscow
Russian collectors were an integral part of the late 18th and early 19th-century aristocratic and/or diplomatic elite. The following decades marked a major shift in this area, reflecting social and economic dynamics in the Russian Empire. Aristocrats like chancellor-prince Alexander Gorchakov continued to stand out, but diplomats and senior civil servants were also men of taste. Read more.