A Tale of Two Brothers

 

They were born within a year of each other: Mikhail Morozov, on the left, in 1870, his brother Ivan the following year. Their great grandfather, Savva Morozov, was born into servitude. Somehow, he managed to create a silk ribbon workshop which quickly became so successful that in 1820 he was able to raise the colossal sum of 17,000 rubles to buy back his freedom and that of his family. They never looked back, building a hugely successful string of textile factories that, by the time Mikhail and Ivan were born, had amassed them enormous wealth and prestige. 

Their mother, Varvara Morozov, widowed in her mid-thirties, (seen here in a portrait by Konstantin Makovsky, 1884), took over the reins of the family business. At the same time, she made sure her sons (a third son Arsene was born in 1874), received a broad education, with a particular emphasis in literature, theatre and the arts. As teenagers, the brothers met most of the influential Russian painters of the day. They underwent apprenticeships with some of them, before turning their attention and their fortunes to creating their own art collections. Russian painters Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Sérov became valued advisers in this enterprise.

Valentin Sérov painted this portrait of Mikhail Morozov in 1902, capturing perfectly the height and portly breadth of the larger-than-life man. A great lover of music and dance and theatre, he was a jovial man of extravagant tastes and ambitions. He wrote theatre reviews, and by age 20 had begun collecting art. In the following thirteen years, he acquired some 83 works, almost equally divided between Russian and French artists. The trend would no doubt have continued, but for his untimely death at the young age of 33.

 

At the time of his brother's death, the quieter, more sober Ivan Morozov (painted here by Konstantin Korovin in 1903), was spending most of his time in the family factories. The profits made by his businesses, from orders submitted by the army in the Russo-Japanese War, enabled him to devote more time to growing his own art collection.

The result of the brothers' endeavors is currently on display at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Frank Gehry designed museum in the Bois du Boulogne: A total of 200 masterpieces from French and Russian artists: The Morozov Collection. Icons of Modern Art, illustrating the emerging artistic modernity of the late 19th early 20th Century. This is the first time the collection has traveled outside of Russia since its creation. With some trepidation at mingling in what we knew would be a crowded event, we masked up, showed our "Pass Sanitaires" (both required for entry), and strode in!  To try and capture the size and scope of the exhibition is not possible, suffice it to say there are eleven galleries in all, each one packed with  paintings and sculptures that took our breath away.

 

Mikhail inherited his mother's love for France and all things French. By 1895 he had made regular visits to Paris, becoming acquainted with some of the leading art dealers, Ambroise Vollard, Eugène Druet and Paul Durand-Ruel. Soon paintings from some of the top artists of the time returned with him to Moscow. This full-length painting of the popular young actress Jeanne Samary by Renoir, painted in 1878,  took pride of place in his mansion. 

 

 A year after his brother's death, Ivan purchased a smaller Renoir featuring the same subject, Jeanne Samary, titled La Réverie,  perhaps as a tribute to his brother.

 

In 1901, Mikhail brought the first painting by Van Gogh ever to reach Moscow, Seascape at Saintes-Maries (1884), along with the first Gaugin work to enter Russia.

 

A small, dimly-lit room in the exhibition is devoted to this one painting! The Prison Courtyard (1890) is a departure from Van Gogh’s usual works. He painted it during his long months of confinement in the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, inspired by a drawing by Gustave Doré. With his dangling arms, in the middle of the circle and looking at the viewer, Van Gogh has represented himself in the costume of a death row inmate. Ivan Morozov bought this painting in 1909 to complete his collection of Van Gogh paintings. It has never before been publicly exhibited.

Mikhail had a great passion for the French Impressionist painters, their landscapes, scenes of Parisian life, also their nudes, even though that was frowned on in Russia at the time. As well as this gorgeous Claude Monet Poppy Field, painted at Giverny in 1890-1891, he collected works by Manet, Corot, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Bonnard, Denis, along with Van Gogh and Gauguin.

Ivan, too, was a lover of Gauguin's art. In 1908, he acquired this stunning painting, Woman Holding a Fruit (1893). In all, his collection has eleven Gauguin works.

Equally prominent in the collection are paintings by Henri Matisse. Commissioned by Ivan in 1909, this brightly colored still life, Fruits and Bronze, finds itself appearing as background in this painting...

...Portrait of Ivan Abromovich Morozov (1910) by the Russian painter, Valentin Sérov. A painting within a painting!

And then there are these three Matisse paintings which together are known as Moroccan Tryptich (1912-1913). Ivan had visited Matisse's studio, where he greatly admired the decorative qualities of the artist's paintings. He commissioned two landscapes in 1911. Matisse travelled to Morocco in 1912 and made these three paintings, completing them in 1913.

Earlier, in 1907, Ivan Morozov wanted to adorn his Moscow mansion with monumental decorative paintings. After visiting Maurice Denis' studio and seeing how he wove mythological references into his paintings, he commissioned him to produce a series of panels that would decorate his Music Room.

Known today as The Story of Psyche, in all, thirteen panels adorned the walls of the room, accompanied by decorative ceramic vases and life-size bronze figures sculpted by Aristide Maillot.

As I sat surrounded by these glorious panels, I imagined the room in 1909, filled with guests all decked out in their finery for a musical soirée. A grand piano in the centre, a suitably handsome/beautiful pianist sitting on the bench, raising their hands and beginning to play... maybe some Chopin Nocturnes, or perhaps Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov!

The successful completion of his Music Room led Ivan next to commission Pierre Bonnard in 1910 to create a set of five large panels for the walls of his entryway and stairwell in his mansion. Bonnard used the theme of the seasons to fill these spaces. Here above, Autumn is represented by Fruit Picking...
 

...whilst summer is represented by this tryptich titled The Mediterranean. You can almost feel that hot, southern sun!

Whilst all these monumental decorative panels were being commissioned and executed, Ivan Morozov continued his trips to Paris, where he consulted with the art dealer professionals and added more and more canvases to his collection.  He bought this stunning "Blue Period" Picasso painting, Young Acrobat on a Ball (1905), from Leo and Gertrude Stein in 1913. It was the last modern painting to enter his collection...
 

The same year, 1913, he had added Picasso's astonishing Portrait of Ambroise Vollard (1910) to his treasure chest of art.

Along with his purchases made during his visits to Paris, Ivan Morozov had close ties with Russian artists of his generation who advised him on purchases to make, including this one, The Smoker (1911) by  Natalia Gontcharova...
 

...and this striking 1911 self portrait by Ilya Machkov.  Between 1904 and 1914, Ivan bought 240 works by French artists, while his Russian art collection grew to 430 pieces.

 

By far the largest number of paintings in the exhibition by a single artist were by Paul Cézanne. 17 -- that's seventeen -- canvasses were on display! Self-Portrait in a Cap (1873) was acquired by Ivan in 1907...

...Still Life with a Curtain (1892-1894) joined the collection in 1907...

...and Great Pine near Aix (1895-1897) in September, 1908. Placed off-centre, the tree trunk stands firmly rooted, whilst its branches reach out across the width of the canvas, and beyond.  Here are two more Cézanne paintings from the exhibition: Trees in a Park (Jas du Bouffon) (1886), and Mont St. Victoire (1896-1898)

 

 

 

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the Morozov collections began to shift. In 1910, Mikhail's widow donated  about sixty of his most important Russian and European paintings to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. With the outbreak of WWI, Ivan Morozov's trips to Paris came to an end.
 

Worse was to come. With the Russian Revolution in 1917, everything changed for Ivan . His business was taken over by the state, his home turned into a museum, and the collection of artworks he had worked so hard to build was nationalized. He was reduced to being an assistant curator of his own paintings. In 1919 he fled Russia, seeking asylum in Finland, before moving again to Czechoslovakia, where he died in 1921 of a heart attack at the age of 49.  His tomb at Karlovy Vary was only discovered in 2012. Surely, the heart attack was a result of a broken heart at having lost everything he had loved and cherished.

 

Shortly after his death, the collection was transferred to the Tretyakov Gallery, where it faded into relative obscurity, but the story did not end here.

 

The paintings were hidden in the Ural Mountains in the 1940s when the Nazis invaded Russia. Finally, the brothers’ collections were distributed around various Russian museums including the Hermitage, Tretyakov and Pushkin, where they live today. Though separated, the collection of over 700 works has been kept in excellent condition.  The name "Morozov" only appeared again on exhibition labels in Moscow and St. Petersberg in the 1990s.

 

The current exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton took years of complex research and planning. We left the museum sending grateful thoughts to the curators who worked so hard to bring it all to fruition and, judging by the age range of the visitors we saw, opening the eyes of a whole new generation to these seminal works of art, and reminding us older patrons of the importance of this moment in modern art. 

 

BRAVO!

 

À bientôt! 

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