Archive · Art · Moscow · Mores
The Russians bought so much Matisse that admirers and friends even asked him whether his pictures would soon be visible only in Moscow. Shchukin commissioned Dance as a large panel for a staircase landing, together with a second large canvas, Music. A touching correspondence passed between patron and painter: on
Archive · Art · Moscow · Museums
The calling card of the Shchukin collection: Henri Matisse's Dance. Matisse's canvases occupy a special place in Shchukin's collection, just as the artist himself does in the life of the collector. As for Shchukin's place in the life of Matisse, the reformer
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Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations · People · Saint Petersburg
Henri Rousseau, Matisse, Picasso: Sergey Ivanovich Shchukin devoted 20 years of his life to acquiring paintings from the finest French artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collection of Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Cubists and Fauves cost the merchant 1 million francs; today its value is estimated at
Aristocracy · Art · Observations · Mores
Do you know what is curious? The daughters of Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin by different women, Ekaterina and Irina, were both married to Counts Keller. The elder married the bibliophile Mikhail Pavlovich, and the younger his nephew, and from that marriage was born André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud, one of the organisers
Observations · Science · Education · Humour
A wave to all my lecturers at the Higher School who made us cram Excel. Some 20% of the genetic studies published in leading scientific journals contain errors caused by the autoformatting settings in Microsoft Excel. You have surely run into it yourselves, when the programme swaps the data you
NB! · Observations
Books · Humour
...“I think I understand him,” said Gargantua. “It puts me in mind of the answer of an ancient philosopher who was asked whether he had possessed a certain woman of whom people were speaking: ‘I have her, yes,’ replied the philosopher, ‘but she has never had me; I possessed her
NB! · Art · Observations · Humour
There are only two kinds of captive. The prisoner taken in battle (suffering in some cave) and the bound captive with bleeding wounds (relieving himself without the aid of his hands, gazing proudly). Which of the two is our favourite, I think, needs no explaining
NB! · Art · Observations · Humour
Just look at this centaur! Isn't it the very image of the slaying of the sacred stag? Though here the deed is done by another mythical creature
Art · Observations
The Wild Hunt, 1890. For me, this is the favourite work of the remarkable Bavarian artist Franz von Stuck, incidentally the teacher of Kandinsky. The elongated horizontal canvas, the arrangement of the figures and the dark colours make the painting resemble cave art. Mystery, tragedy, magic, fate and beauty. I
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