Meunier’s realist traditions were continued by Roger Somville (born 1923)-A Miner from Borinage and Robert Crommelynck (born 1895)- Peat Worker. The exhibition is completed by the Old

Woman by Kurt Peiser (1887-1962) and Self-portrait by Francois Depooter (born 1898).

Nineteenth century Dutch art is represented by Jan Weissenbruch’s Street in a Dutch Town and by Albert Neuhuijs’ Family of a Cobbler.

The German school is represented by works of Franz Stuck (1863- 1929) – Fight for a Woman (1905) and Hans Toma (1839-1924) – Adam and Eve (1897).

In this room is also displayed The Dwarf Gregorio by the Spanish artist Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1946).

The display includes also genre paintings by Ludwig Knaus (1829- 1910) and Wilhelm Leibl (1836-1904) and a pastel by Max Lieber-mann (1847-1935), the principal representative of Impressionism in Germany.

During the First Empire Neoclassicism remained, as before, the main trend in art, but it had already lost its revolutionary essence. ? Now, turning to classical antiquity, artists began to choose idyllic or allegorical themes. Guerin’s paintings Morpheus and Iris and Sapho and two sculptures, Chaudet’s Cypress and Canova’s Dancer, illustrate the fundamental changes in Neoclassical-art.

The leading figure in French Neoclassicism was Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). The Hermitage does not possess any of David’s paintings of the Revolutionary period. From his late canvas Sapho and Phaon (1809) it is evident that at the time of the Empire no traces remained of the revolutionary spirit of the former member of the National Convention, the creator of the Death of Marat.

Delacroix. Arab Saddling His Horse. 1855

In the same room is Antoine Gros’s (1771-1835) Napoleon upon the Bridge at Arcole. This painting is based upon the actual event at the time of the Italian campaign of 1797; during the battle of Arcole Bonaparte, young general at that time, was the first to rush forward and, leading his men, began the assault on the bridge. In Gros’s handling the figure of Napoleon lost the rhetorical quality of Lethiere’s hero; however, it contains a greater feeling of vitality, greater energy, those qualities which later received expression in the paintings of the Romantics.

Franfois Gerard (1770-1837) expressed in his work the tastes of the ruling class. His Portrait of Josephine (Napoleon’s first wife) presents a new type of formal portrait, in which Gerard skilfully combines the austerity of a classical composition with a simple and unaffected rendering of the appearance of his model. One of the first artists to portray the everyday life of the bourgeois society of his time was Louis Boilly, who painted the small picture A Game of Billiards.

Room 331. Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), the major painter of the Romantic movement, is represented in the Hermitage by two late works, Lion Hunt in Morocco (1854) and Arab Saddling His Horse (1855). One glance at these paintings is sufficient for an understanding of the great difference between them and the painting produced by the artist of the Neoclassical school. Painted in bright, fresh colours, Delacroix’s canvases are filled with the ardent breath of life, and a sense of grandeur of nature.

Dupre. Autumn Landscape

One of the representatives of the Romantic movement in sculpture is the animalist Antoine Barye (1796-1875), the creator of the bronze groups A Lion and a Snake and A Panther and an Antelope. Like Delacroix, Barye imbues his works with great expressiveness, revealing in them the harsh laws of the animal kingdom.

Jean-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), a staunch adherent of Neo-classicism and an ardent admirer of antiquity and Raphael, was among the most subtle and complex artists of the mid-nineteenth century. The only painting by him in the Hermitage is the portrait of the Russian diplomat Count Guryev, painted in 1821 and notable for the austere formal arrangement and the strength and assurance of line.

Renoir. Girl with a Fan. 1881

Rooms 321, 322, 325, 328 and 329. In the 1830s the realist trend appeared in French painting, heralded by the Barbizon school of landscape painters. This name was given to a group of artists who had settled in the village of Barbizon near Paris, where they faithfully reproduced in their paintings their native countryside. There is a large collection of landscapes of the Barbizon school in the Hermitage. Its leading figure, Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867), showed, even in one of his early works In the Vicinity of Granville that the simple, visually unprepossessing countryside of Normandy could become a source of inspiration. Close to Rousseau in their perception of nature are Jules Dupre, Charles Francois Daubigny, Diaz de la Peiia, Charles Jaques and Constant Troyon.

Degas. Woman Combing Her Hair. 1886

An important place in the history of French landscape painting belongs to Camille Corot (1796-1875). A profound, subtle understanding of nature connects him with the painters of the Barbizon school, but unlike them Corot did not strive for an accurate reproduction of landscape. His poetic landscapes are echoes of the artist’s own experiences. “If you are really moved,” said Corot, “the sincerity of your feelings will be felt by others.”

The work of the leading painters of the realist movement, Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) and Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), developed under the influence of the bourgeois revolution of 1848. Millet was the first among his contemporaries to depict French village life, with what was then unusual degree of profundity and veracity. The Hermitage possesses only one of his paintings, Peasant Women Carrying Firewood. Courbet, an active figure in the Paris Commune, was the major representative of the realist movement in painting and ardently defended the right of the artist to portray contemporary life. The only Courbet in the Hermitage is the Landscape with a Dead Horse which, because of its poor state of preservation, does not give us any real idea of his skill as an artist. The choice of theme in this painting represents a challenge to the official art, because Courbet maintained that the artist should be concerned with life in all its diversity.

Rodin. Eternal Spring. After 1884

Room 320. Towards the 1870s Impressionism reached its peak in France, the movement having originated as a protest against the rigid convention which prevailed in official art. The Impressionists emerged as heirs to the realist traditions and enriched painting with their fresh, Joyful colours, their representation of light, and exquisite rendering of atmosphere. They drew only from life, and did not complete their paintings in the studio from sketches as their predecessors had done, but out in the pleln air, capturing the spontaneity and naturalness of the first visual impression. In conveying the wealth of colour in the real world around them the Impressionists attempted to catch and to record its face, forever changing under the play of light. But, having focused their attention on purely artistic goals, these painters thereby limited the possibilities of art and relegated the social theme into the background.

Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) embodies the principles and methods of Impressionism in portrait painting. Renoir did not attempt to reveal in his portraits intricate feelings or emotions; he caught the spontaneous movement, the half-smile, the gentle reverie of his model. Unaffected animation and simplicity characterize his Girl with a Fan and Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary. Renoir’s colours are notable for their freshness, the richness of hues, and the extremely delicate transition from one tone to the next.

Monet. Lady in a Garden. 1860s

The work of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is represented by some pastels – Woman Combing Her Hair, After the Bath and Dancers’ Heads. Together with the Impressionist paintings are displayed marble sculptures by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and bronzes by Aristide Maillol (1840-1942).

Room 319. One of the leading Impressionist painters was Claude Monet (1840-1925), whose picture, Impression: Sunrise, exhibited in Paris in 1874, gave the name to the whole movement. One of the artist’s early works, Lady in the Garden (1860s), reflects the first success of the new manner of painting. The colours have become fresher and more vivid; abandoning black and subdued tones, Monet painted the shade in colour depending on the surrounding milieu. The woman’s white dress in the shade of the parasol, for example, acquires a bluish hue against the background of the green foliage and the blue sky. In the landscape The River Bank (1873) the canvas is filled as it were with the subtle, barely perceptible movement of currents of moist air, in which outlines of things melt into nothing. Gradually the rendering of light and air became Monet’s main theme and he portrayed one and the same subject several times in different lights, stripping things of their materiality (see his London Fog, 1903). Room 318. The painting of city landscapes was introduced into art by the Impressionists. Paris street life with its characteristic bustle, commotion and endless flow of traffic and pedestrians was captured by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) in his paintings The Boulevard Montmartre and Place du Thedtre Francais.

Gauguin. Woman Holding a Fruit. 1893

The eleven paintings by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) make it possible to observe the main stages in the development of the artist’s work. Unlike the Impressionists Cezanne tried to reveal the materiality and plasticity of whatever he depicted. Typical in this way is the landscape Banks of the Marne (1888), in which he painted a tranquil scene from nature, as though trying to immortalize on canvas its immutable qualities. Still-life painting was Cezanne’s favourite genre. His still lifes are simple: a wooden table, two or three faience vessels, some fruit, all objects possessing some special distinctive corporeity peculiar to Cezanne. To preserve their “eternal” qualities – weight and volume – Cezanne made the form geometric, building it up with thick strokes of bright green, orange and blue. Room 317. The Hermitage has four paintings by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890): View of the Arena in Aries, Ladies of Aries (Memory of the Garden at Etten), Bushes, and Cottages with Thatched Roofs. Cottages painted during the last years of the artist’s life, is penetrated with the feeling of anxiety which overcame him on seeing the poor dwellings, clinging to the slope of the hill. Van Gogh’s characteristic dramatic tension is felt in the vividness of the colours, the restless rhythm of the thick, energetic brushstrokes, and the expressiveness of line.

Displayed in the same room are Tropical Forest and The Luxembourg Gardens with the Bust of Chopin by Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), usually referred to as a “naive artist” or a Primitive.

Matisse. The Dance. 1910

Room 316. The fifteen paintings in the Hermitage by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) belong to his so-called Tahitian period which began after he left France and settled in 1891 on these islands in the Pacific Ocean. In his pictures painted in the tropics Gauguin extolls a world untouched by bourgeois “civilization” and full of the exotic, where people live in harmony with nature. Gauguin’s paintings are decorative, the areas of local colours lie on the canvas in motionless patches, and the contours of the figures and objects – sometimes smooth and fluid, sometimes exquisitely delicate – give the picture the semblance of a co’.oured pattern (Tahitian Pastoral Scenes, Woman Holding a Fruit, Miraculous Source, The Idol, etc.).

Rooms 343-345. The thirty-five pictures by Henri Matisse (1869- 1954), painted between 1900 and 1913, make it possible to illustrate the special features of the work of one of the leading twentieth century French artists. The Family Group, Red Room and other of Matisse’s works are striking in their decorative quality and their saturated colours. Rejecting a chiaroscuro treatment, Matisse simplifies and schematizes his figures and objects, building up his composition on the contrasting juxtaposition of large areas of pure colour. The radiant colourfulness of Matisse’s canvases produces a feeling of joy and gaiety.

Picasso. Boy with a Dog. 1905

Rooms 346 and 347. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was the major figure in art in the modern Western world. He was an eminent French progressive, the winner of the International Peace Prize and of the International Lenin Prize “for the strengthening of peace between nations”. The development of Picasso’s work is unusually complex and contradictory. The Hermitage collection consisting of thirty-six works, helps illustrate just the beginning of this development. In one of the best paintings of his early period, Woman Drinking Absinth (1901), Picasso created a type that evokes a deep sense of tragedy. The Portrait of Soler and The Visit (Two Sisters) belong to the so-called Blue Period (1901-04); his Pink Period (1905-6) is represented by a gouache drawing, Boy with a Dog.

Between 1906 and 1907 Picasso was absorbed with analysis of form and reduced everything to a simplified volume similar to a cube, a sphere or a cylinder. He became one of the founders of a new tendency in art, Cubism, typical of which are such works as Woman with a Fan, Three Women, Pitcher and Bowl and others. After this Picasso arrived at a complete break-up of form; he destroys volume and creates free compositions from planes and lines (cf. Flute and Violin, 1912). Such experiments only led him to a dead end and he gave up experimenting further.

Renato Qutiuso. Rocco and Son. 1960

Rooms 348 and 349. Among the paintings displayed of early twentieth century artists are works by Andre Derain (1880-1954) – The Wood, The Lake and A Harbour in Provence; Maurice Vlaminck (1876-1958) – ^4 View of the Seine; Jean-Edouard Vuillard (1868 – 1940) – A Room and Children; Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) – The Arrival of Spring and A Corner of Paris; Louis Valtat (1869-1952) – Pleasure Party in the Garden; Maurice Denis (1870-1943) – Spring Landscape with Figures.

Room 350 coniains a large collection of pictures by the fine landscape painter Albert Marquet (1875-1947), whose greatest love was Paris and who painted her streets and squares, embankments and bridges over the Seine. The colours in his landscapes are always true to life, the line simple and laconic, and objects are represented in a very generalized way (cf. Rainy Day in Paris; The Louvre Embankment and the Pont-Neuf in Paris and Naples).

Kent. Maine Headland. Winter. 1906

Displayed in the same room are landscapes by Leopold Survage (1879-1968) and Andre Fougeron (born 1913). The Bridge was painted by the latter in 1964. Glowing colouring and great vitality distinguish the Red Dancer and Lady in a Black Hat by Cornelius Kees Van Don-gen (1877-1968).

In room 350 are also shown paintings by Fernand Leger (1881- 1955),- Carte postale and Composition.

Gainsborough. Portrait of the Duchess of Beaufort (?). 1770s

The very rich collection in the Hermitage allows us to trace the development of the style of fifteenth and sixteenth century French enamellers. Religious subjects were gradually replaced by mythological ones, medieval convention gave way to a realistic handling of themes, and grisaille (a painting executed entirely in monochrome, in a series of greys) superseded polychrome painting, thus making it possible to convey volume both of figures and of space. The Renaissance artists turned from objects connected with religious worship to the creation of decorative secular articles, such as dishes, jugs and plates.

Morland. Approaching Storm. 1791

Room 274. Sixteenth century French court art, the so-called Fon-tainebleau school, developed under the significant influence of Italian Mannerism. The Venus and Cupid relief was created by one of the leading representatives of the Fontainebleau school, Jean Goujon (1510-1568). The sculptor has skilfully worked into his composition carved on an oval medallion, the graceful, somewhat elongated figure of the goddess presented in a fanciful pose. The distinctive originality of sixteenth century French art is seen more clearly in portrait painting. One of the finest items in the exhibition is the Portrait of the Duke of Alenpon, painted by the famous Francois Clouet (1520-1572).

Bonington. Boats at a Shore. C. 1825

In a large cabinet there are some faiences by Bernard Palissy (1510-1589), the inventor of a coloured, transparent glazing which gave pottery additional beauty and durability. At one time his decorative dishes with relief designs of fish, snakes and crayfish were tremendously popular; this was called Palissy’s rustic pottery. In a case by the window there are three exquisite sixteenth century faience vessels made in the small French town of Saint-Porchaire. They have been preserved up to the present day only as separate items, not as part of a set.

Goujon. Venus and Cupid

Rooms 275-278. Early and mid-17th century art. During the seventeenth century a number of different trends developed in French art. Two paintings by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), Heracles among the Olympians and Portrait of Anne of Austria as Minerva, are typical examples of court art at the time of Louis XIII (room 275). Room 276 contains some of the work of Jacques Callot (1592-1635), a good representative of the realist trend in the French art of this period. A series of etchings produced by him called The Disasters of War constitute, for those times, an unusually bold exposure of the bloody events of the Thirty Years’ . War. Views of Paris and Nancy, prints portraying beggars, gypsies and actors of Italian comedy all point to the great range of this craftsman’s fine work. Of great importance in seventeenth century French art was the work of the Le Nain brothers, who portrayed peasant life with great sympathy and respect for the common man. The MilkwOman’s Family was painted by Louis (1593-1648), the most talented of the brothers. Although he took for his subject an everyday theme, the artist was able to impart to it a definite importance; the figures of the peasants are full of dignity, and the compact group stands out boldly against the silvery expanse of the masterfully painted landscape. Also in this room are Louis Le Nain’s A Visit to Grandmother, Peasants at Table by Antoine Le Nain and A Peasant Family by the third brother, Mathieu.

Louis le Nain. The Mllkwoman’s Family. 1640s

Room 279. The Hermitage has a very large and valuable collection of the works of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the founder of Neoclassicism in seventeenth century French painting. The main task of art according to Poussin was to portray the noble, the heroic and the beautiful embodied in ideal forms, which the artist can learn only by studying the legacy of antiquity. In the centre of Poussin’s vision stands Man, endowed with reason, will and spiritual beauty. Such are the heroes of his numerous paintings on biblical, mythological, and literary themes: the selfless Erminia in Tancred and Er-minia, the fearless Esther of Esther before Ahasuerus, and Moses the wise tribal chief in Moses Striking the Rock. Poussin’s rationalism and philosophical outlook are revealed in his delightful Landscape with Polythemus (1649). Polythemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, is sitting on the top of a rock playing a pipe; the nymphs, satyrs and a ploughman tilling the land are all absorbing this song. In his search for an ideal representation of nature Poussin does not paint from life, but builds up his landscape from separate details observed in nature.

Room 280. Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) was a leading exponent of the classical landscape. Composed according to the rules of Classicism, Claude’s canvases are saturated with light, which lends them a particular emotional quality. The famous series The Four Times of the Day (Morning, Noon, Evening and Night) reflects the artist’s interest in light, which was something new for French art.

Poussin. Tancred and Erminia. 1630s

Room 281. Late 17th century art. The official art of France during the golden age of the absolute monarchy served the task of glorifying Louis XIV. Artistic life was regulated by the Academy, at the head of which was the premier pelntre to the king, Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), and after him Pierre Mignard (1612-1695). Mi-gnard’s work is represented by the monumental Magnanimity of Alexander the Great. After his victory over the Persian emperor Darius, Alexander enters his tent where he encounters the family of the vanquished emperor begging for mercy. With a gesture of the hand the victor grants the captives their lives. The choice of subject was not fortuitous; in the figure of Alexander is glorified le roi soleil, Louis XIV. If Mignard extolled the king in the figure of the great general, the sculptor Francois Girardon (1628-1715) portrayed Louis as a Roman emperor. Qirardon’s small bronze model for the unpreserved equestrian monument presents the king of France in the attire of the ancient Roman soldier and in a wig, such as was worn in the seventeenth century.

In room 282 there is a unique collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century Western European silver, for the most part French. Rooms 290-297 contain items of French applied art, including furniture, Gobelin tapestries, faience, bronze and porcelain. This collection is known throughout the world on account of its exceptional wealth and because of the great range of items.

Room 283. This exhibition introduces the visitor to the French portrait painting of the second half of the seventeenth century. The eminent artist Nicolas Largilliere (1756-1846) is represented by a sketch for a large painting which has not been preserved – a group portrait of the members of the Paris parliament entitled Preparation for a Fete in the Paris Town Hall to Celebrate Louis XIV’s Recovery. The Portrait of a Scholar was painted by the distinguished portrait artist Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743). The two ebony cupboards, decorated with bronze and tortoise-shell and used for keeping medals in were made in the workshop of Andre-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), a well-known furniture-maker. An original Boulle cupboard can be seen in room 293.

Watteau, A Capricious Woman. C. 1718

Rooms 284-289. 18th century art. This room/contains several pieces by one of France’s most eminent artists, Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) who, in his search for a realist approach, broke with hidebound academic convention. In his small paintings The Hardships of War and The Recreations of War (room 284) Watteau portrayed the everyday life of a soldier rather than ostentatious battle scenes as his predecessors had done. The Savoyard with a Marmot (1716), a picture of a simple-hearted young travelling musician, also confirms Watteau’s interest in the simple phenomena of life. The blue expanse of the clear, fresh sky, the buildings of the small town, and the silhouettes of the bare trees make up a landscape in which the fresh colours of autumn are dominant. Watteau became famous after his adoption of a completely new genre, as painter of so-called fetes galantes. An example of this type of painting is the Embarrassing Proposal, painted around 1716. Some members of fashionable society are amusing themselves chatting in the shade of the gossamery foliage; the casually graceful postures of the young ladies and their admirers convey subtle, almost imperceptible shades of emotion. A delicate range of colour is manipulated by Watteau in tones of subdued silvery grey, brownish-orange and yellowish-pink. Exquisite colouring and delicate execution distinguish one of the artist’s masterpieces, a small painting A Capricious Woman (c. 1718), in which the spectator encounters the same world of superficial feelings.

Boucher. Pastoral Scene. 1740s

The exhibition in rooms 285 and 286 presents examples of Rococo art which existed, according to the apt remark of a contemporary, “in order to please”. Venuses, cupids, shepherd boys and shepherd girls are the central figures of the many works of Francois Boucher (1703-1770), a court painter of Louis XV. “What colours What diversity!… But where, you ask yourself, has one ever seen shepherd boys dressed with such elegance, such splendour?” These words of Denis Diderot concerning Boucher’s paintings may also be applied to the Pastoral Scene, which is in the Hermitage. Boucher’s oval-shaped canvases, The Triumph of Venus and The Toilet of Venus, confined in their colours to attractive pinks and blues, are very typical of Rococo art, of which he was a distinguished exponent.

In room 285 particular mention should be made of the work of Etienne-Maurice Falconet (1716-1791), who executed the equestrian statue of Peter the Great (“Bronze Horseman”) in St Petersburg. His Cupid and Flora, in which elegance is combined with the true-to-life quality of the figures, are evidence of the sculptor’s faithful adherence to realist traditions. In a large cabinet by the window, among some Sevres porcelains, are the unglazed white porcelain statuettes Cupid, Psyche and Woman Bathing, made from models of Falconet.

Falconet. Flora. 1750s

Room 286 contains a number of portraits by Jean-Marc Nattier and Louis Tocque, painters who at one time enjoyed considerable popularity. Falconet’s sculpture Winter is distinguished from his earlier works by its greater severity of style; this is related to the growing influence of Classicism in French art during the last thirty years or so of the eighteenth century.

Room 287. Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) was a leading representative of the realist movement in eighteenth century French art, which reflected the ideas and beliefs of the bourgeoisie at that time becoming more firmly established. His Washerwoman (c. 1737) and Grace before Meat (1744) take the onlooker into the sphere of activities and everyday problems and chores of a poor French family. Chardin was an outstanding painter of still life, which was unknown to French aristocratic art as an independent genre. The appeal of the Still Life with the Attributes of the Arts, painted by Chardin in 1766 for the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, lies in the austere conception of the composition and the subtle, skilful use of colour.

Chardin. The Washerwoman. C. 1737

In the centre of the room stands the marble statue of the great man of the Enlightenment Voltaire (1781), created by the realist sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). The eighty-four-year-old Voltaire sat for him in 1778, but by May of that year the great man was dead. With ruthless veracity the hand of the sculptor portrayed the aged, weak body, the hands disfigured by illness, the crooked spine and toothless mouth. But upon the face of Voltaire, with its high brow, ironic smile and the poignant gaze of the sharp eyes, is the seal of an immortal intellect and undying energy. The philosopher, seated in an armchair, is dressed in a garment which reminds us of the ancient toga, and upon his head he wears an ancient headband. Also of interest are the portrait busts of Diderot and Falconet carved in marble by Marie-Anne Collot (1748-1821). Collot came with her teacher Falconet to Russia, where she took part in the work on the Bronze Horseman. It was from her model that the head of Peter the Great was made.

Room 288. The bourgeois theoreticians of the immediate pre-Revolution period in France had a high regard for the didactic, sentimental art of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805). His Paralytic Helped by His Children, one of his most famous canvases, was considered to be an affirmation of bourgeois virtue and a protest against the depravity of the aristocracy and the frivolity of Rococo art. Another example of this type of moralizing scene is his painting Widow Visiting the Cure. Greuze’s artistic merit is seen fully in such works as The Spoilt Child, Girl with a Doll and Young Man in a Hat. Three paintings-The Stolen Kiss, The Farmer’s Children and The Snatched Kiss – illustrate the work of the fine painter of the second half of the eighteenth century Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732- 1806). There are also some paintings by the famous landscape painter Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789).

Houdon. Voltaire. 1781

Room 289. In the White Room (designed by Briullov, 1838) there are paintings, sculptures and items of applied art from the last thirty years of the eighteenth century. During these years Hubert Robert (1733- 1808) enjoyed great popularity; ancient ruins were the favourite theme of his decorative landscapes.

Room 299. 18th century art. The most outstanding English painter of the eighteenth century was Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), first president of the Royal Academy in London, art theoretician, and a celebrated painter of portraits and history pictures. His large-scale canvas The Infant Heracles Strangling the Serpents, commissioned by Catherine II and painted between 1786 and 1788, is an allegorical representation of Russia vanquishing her enemies. Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus, also painted by Reynolds, is an example of the mythological portrait, which at that time was very common. Under Reynolds’s influence developed the work of George Romney (1734-1802), a portrait painter popular among London high society (see his Portrait of Mrs Greer).

Room 300. Reynolds’s great contemporary Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), a painter of lyrical landscapes and a distinguished portrait artist, is represented in the Soviet Union by one delightful painting, known as the Portrait of the Duchess of Beaufort, painted in the 1770s. The delicate bluish range of colours in which the picture was painted emphasizes the refined, exalted beauty of the model. John Hoppner (Portrait of Sheridan) and the Scot Henry Raeburn (Portrait of Eleanor Bethune) were among the best known portrait painters of the eighteenth century. In his Approaching Storm, George Morland (1763-1804) created a typical eighteenth century English landscape, imbued with a keen perception of nature and enveloped in a mood of romanticism. Also by Morland are the small genre scenes Gypsies, Peasant at a Window and The Fish Seller.

The Hermitage possesses an unusually large collection of English ceramics, the appearance of which is associated with the name of Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795). The articles produced in the factory he founded, a new type of unglazed pottery in pale blue, violet and black with white, classical-style relief designs, became widely known in Europe. The Green Frog service, made at the Wedgwood factory in 1774 for Catherine II, is unique. The service consists of nine hundred and fifty-two pieces ornamented with English landscape scenes. The small shield containing the representation of a green frog painted on each piece gave the service its name.

Room 301. 19th century art. The English painting of the first half of the nineteenth century is illustrated by the work of such important portrait painters as Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) and George Dawe (1781 -1829). Some idea of the success of realist trends in nineteenth century English landscape painting may be obtained from the small picture entitled Boats at a Shore by the talented Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) and Landscape, painted by an unknown artist from the circle of John Constable.

Room 302. The last room of the English exhibition contains individual examples of the art of the second half of the nineteenth century. One item of interest is the large tapestry The Adoration of the Magi made from a drawing by Edward Burne-Jones (1823- 1898), who belonged to the pre-Raphaelite movement which sprang up in England in the 1840s.

Deserving special note is a large eighteenth century service of Viennese porcelain and the Service with the Cameos, consisting of over seven hundred pieces and made to the order of Catherine II in the French town of Sevres.

Mention should also be made of the collection of Englishmade porcelain – Wedgwood pottery from the works at Chelsey, Bow, Worcester, Derby and Swansea. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Hungary are also represented by some fine items (room 269-271).

The outstanding item in room 269 is the large dessert set made in Berlin and presented by the Prussian king Frederick the Great to the Russian empress Catherine II in 1722. The purely decorative objects in the set include a large number of figures representing the different nationalities in Russia who are surrounding a throne upon which sits Catherine II. The groups of bound captives and the trophies refer to a Russian victory in the war with Turkey.