Новоспасский мост. В марте. Холст на картоне, масло, 56,5 × 70,5. Из коллекции Н.А. Арнинг. Из фондов ГБУК города Москвы «Музейное объединение «Музей Москвы»
Before the 1917 Revolution, “New Snow” was exhibited in the Tretyakov Gallery permanent collection, hanging next to Osip Braz’s portrait of Anton Chekhov. The painting was very popular, and often reproduced in books, magazines and on postcards: it remains at the Tretyakov Gallery today. In 1874 Ivan Tsvetkov (1845-1917), a fellow collector and Muscovite, saw Pavel Tretyakov’s collection when it first began to be opened to the public, and decided to dedicate himself to collecting art. Beginning from the 1880s, he started to acquire works from artists – mostly graphic pieces (drawings, etchings, even sketches) rather than paintings. By then Tsvetkov and Pavel Tretyakov knew each other well, and the former would often rely on Tretyakov’s expert opinion. Tsvetkov knew Germashev, too, from various Moscow exhibitions; in 1897, along with the artists Vasily Polenov, Isaak Levitan, Valentin Serov and Abram Arkhipov, Tsvetkov served as a judge at that same Moscow Society of Art Lovers competition. Tsvetkov purchased Germashev’s painting “Beginning of Winter”, long after Art collectors and patrons
Tretyakov had made his own acquisition, in the mid1910s. This work was not included in the Inventory of the Tsvetkov Gallery Works of Art because it became part of the collection at the very end of 1915 or beginning of 1916, after that listing had already been finalized and published.3 In 1926 the State Museum Fund allocated this painting to Udmurtia, and it is now housed at the Sarapul Museum of Central Kama River Region Natural History, at the “Bashenin Dacha” art exhibition complex. Another of Germashev’s paintings, “Winter Landscape”, is in the permanent display of the Russian Museum. It originated from the collection of Sergei Sheremetev (1844-1918), the statesman and public figure, historian, writer, bibliophile and art collector. The walls of the Green Drawing Room of the Sheremetev Palace (often referred to as the House on Fontanka) were hung with paintings by Konstantin Makovsky, Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky, Vladimir Orlovsky, and Stanislav Zhukovsky. Germashev’s work was there, too: a landscape with a church after the first snowfall. After the Revolution the Sheremetev Palace was turned into 110
The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine #3 (52) 2016
March. Novospassky Bridge. Oil on canvas mounted on cardboard. 56.5 × 70.5 cm. Collection of Nina Arning. Collection of the Museum Association “Museum of Moscow”