A.F. Mantel’s Art Collection in Museums of the Volga Region: Reconstruction Experience

Abstract

A characteristic feature of the artistic life of Russia at the turn of the 19th—20th centuries was the growth in the number of private art collections and the expansion of the social composition of collectors due to the addition of industrialists, merchants and intellectuals. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, these collections became one of the important sources in the formation of art collections of metropolitan and provincial museums of Russia. The article is devoted to one of the most interesting private collections of the Kazan province — the collection of A.F. Mantel, formed at the beginning of the 20th century from paintings and graphics by the leading masters of the World of Art association: A.N. Benois, I.Ya. Bilibin, A.F. Gaush, B.M. Kustodiev, D.I. Mitrokhin, G.I. Narbut, N.K. Roerich and others. The article reveals the fates of once famous works of the artists from the World of Art association, which were shown at the association’s exhibitions and published in well-known books, magazines and almanacs such as Apollo, Libra, Rosehip, At Dawn and others. A.F. Mantel’s collection played an important role in the formation of museums in several cities of the Volga region — Kazan, Tetyushi, Kozmodemyansk — becoming one of the sources of contemporary national art collections. Due to various reasons, the most of the collection, including the part received by museums, was lost in the late 1910s — 1930s. Relying on archival and literary sources and museum collections, the author, for the first time, managed to restore, with a high degree of accuracy, the composition of the part of A.F. Mantel’s collection that was purchased for museums of Tetyushi and Kozmodemyansk, and to clarify the composition of the Kazan Museum’s collection.