NOBLE PATRONAGE, 1740S-1850*

ETTA L. PERKINS

NOBLE PATRONAGE, 1740s-1850*

Who supported artists is an issue in the social history of art in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tsarist Russia. There is no argument about the extent of state and court support. The government and the court engaged in massive building projects re- quiring the use of architects, sculptors and sometimes painters. Thus the government and court were major and reliable sources of patronage. In the second half of the nineteenth century, merchants emerged as major patrons, especially of painters. But what about the nobility? Did the nobility fail to perform the role for which it was capable? Private patronage before the emergence of the great merchant patrons in the second half of the nineteenth century remains to be examined. Scholars and critics of the nineteenth century, of course, reached conclusions or made sug- gestions about the nature of patronage by the nobility, as a brief survey of the literature on the social world of the artist indicates. In that century, the avidity with which merchants acquired art made the earlier sponsorship of the arts by the nobility seem in- significant. Thus, the critic V. V. Stasov felt that nobles partici- pated only slightly in fostering artistic activity,l while the art historian A. P. Novitskii, in extolling merchant patrons, even asserted that patronage by the nobility was almost absent.22 Twentieth-century assessments of the nobilities' patronage are not so negative. Frederick Starr's brief discussion suggests that the nobility, albeit a small group, did form a clientele for artists.3 Richard Hare noted that patronage among them could be

* I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following persons: Robert F. Byrnes, Barbara Jelavich, John Schillinger, Martin Ridge, Susan Danly, and Helga Harriman. 1. Akademiia Khudozhestv-Inatitut isotorii i istorii izobrazitelnykh iskusstv, V. V. Stasov, Stati i zametki ne voshedshie v sobraniia sochineniia (Moscow: "Iskusstvo," 1954), II, 396. 2. A. P. Novitskii, Istoriia russkogo iskusstva s drevneishikh vremen (Moscow: V. N. Lind, 1903) II, 376. 3. S. Frederick Starr, "Russian Art and Society, 1800-1850," Art and Culture in Nineteenth Century Russia, edited by Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1983), 91. favorably contrasted with patronage by merchants, if not in quantity, then in quality.4 A Soviet art historian, Mikhail Alpatov, however, offers a qualifying observation. Writing about the nineteenth-century painter Alexander Ivanov, Alpatov ar- gued that great noble patrons existed in the eighteenth century, but that they were absent in the first half of the nineteenth century.5S Twentieth-century interpretations of patronage in imperial Russia are certainly more favorable to the role of the nobility in support of art. The problem that exists in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentary is that assessments of patronage are often made without documentation. The purpose of this essay is to examine the nature and extent of noble patronage. A study of biographies, memoirs, letters and general histories enables the historian to provide answers to the questions to what extent was noble patronage available and to what extent it was like merchant patronage an alternative to the patronage of court and state. A study of biographies, memoirs, letters, and general histories def- initely refutes nineteenth-century contentions and supplies the evidence necessary to prove the unsupported assertions of some twentieth-century writers. Such sources show that the patronage of the nobility was significant to artists. There was no great tradition of private patronage to build on until Peter the Great initiated the transformation of Russia's art between 1700 and 1725. Peter, in fact, forced nobles in the early eighteenth century to commission art works. As a better educated and more widely travelled nobility emerged, it developed a self- sustaining demand for art. The nobility did not make up a ven- turesome market, and in the eighteenth century it was not an alternative to state and court patronage. But from Elizabeth's reign (1741-62), nobles were important consumers of art. As prolific builders of lavish palatial residences, country houses, churches, small theaters, private art galleries, as well as the parks and gardens sometimes surrounding them, the nobles employed artists of all kinds. In St. Petersburg, rich nobles provided commissions to such leading court and state architects as Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Sawa Ivanovich Chevakinskii, Vallen de la Mothe and Giacomo Quarenghi. In addition to all his work for the court and state,

4. Richard Hare, The Art and Artists of Russia (London: Methuen, 1965), p. 222. 5. Mikhail V. Alpatov, Aleksandr Andreevich Ivanov, zhizn' i tvorchestvo (Moscow: "Iskusstvo," 1956), II, 32.