IRKUTSK

MUSEUMS. Fine Arts Museum
 

One of the best and richest museums in Russia. In the 1870s the mayor of Irkutsk Vladimir Sukachev started collecting paintings, drawings and sculptures. His gallery had more than 80 excellent works of Russian and West-European masters of the 16th-19th cc. The collection gained great popularity soon and became a special place of interest in the area. Then its owner presented it to the town and the Irkutsk Fine Arts Museum was born. 

Museum contains a unique collection of works of art including old church wooden sculptures, icons of the Novgorod, Siberian and other schools (16th-17th cc), canvases by the best Russian painters of the 18th-20th cc such as Fedor Rokotov, Vladimir Borovikovsky, Dmitry Levitsky, Orest Kiprensky, Vasili Tropinin, Ilya Repin, Vasili Polenov, Konstantin Korovin, Boris Kustodiev, Filip Malyavin, Piotr Konchalovsky, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Arkady Plastov, A.Kuindji, Ivan Shishkin, Valentin Serov and the others. 

The exhibits of oriental collection were handed to the gallery from the museum of the Eastern-Siberian department of Russian geographical society. You'll see here a large collection of paintings from China, India and Japan, collection of Old Oriental China and articles of the applied arts. 

A rich collection of a senator N.Erakov belongs to a number of happy acquisitions: Daos deities sculptures, ancient Russian art silver, rare monuments from stone and partitioned enamel of China, picturesque canvases of S. Dofen, P. Patter, Е. Lansere's sculpture. The museum became the owner of two porcelain icon-stands of the late of the XIX centuries. The analogues of these icon-stands are not present in any other museums of our country. There is Oriental exposition on the 1st floor and the expositions of Russian and West -European masters on the 2nd floor.