Documentary archive of Alexander Gaush (1873–1947) in the Simferopol Art Museum collection. Letters of Igor Grabar

Abstract

This article classifies the archive of Alexander Gaush in the Simferopol Art Museum funds and studies the texts of individual documents. Alexander Gaush (1873–1947) was an artist and graphic artist, participant of exhibitions of the Academy of Arts and the World of Art artistic movement, one of the founders of the New Society of Artists, curator of the Museum of Old Saint Petersburg, professor of painting, a talented teacher. A number of archive documents were previously studied by the chief curator of museum funds Leonarda Rybnikova, the Crimean art critic Sergey Pushkarev; individual pages of the artist’s biography were illuminated by the employee of the State Museum of Saint Petersburg History Lyudmila Aksenova. The archive documents can be classified into two sections: the first includes letters and handwritten documents authored by Alexander Gaush; the second includes letters addressed to A.Gaush and various documents related to the life and work of the artist and his wife Lyubov Gaush (1873–1943). Among A.Gaush’s correspondents are prominent artists: Eugene Demmeni (1898–1969), Nikolay Root (1870–1960), Alfred Eberling (1872–1951), Igor Grabar (1871–1960). The letters of Igor Grabar, sent in 1946–1947, allow us to see a picture of the artistic life of this time. The text of these letters sheds light on the history of the portrait, which A.Gaush, with the assistance of Igor Grabar, tried to transfer to the Russian Museum through the Leningrad Purchasing Commission. A number of facts suggest that this work of art was the Portrait of Lyubov Gaush created by Alexander Sokolov, which was transferred by A.Gaush for temporary storage to the Simferopol Art Gallery in 1946 and accepted into the main fund in 1949.