State Tretyakov Gallery

The State Tretyakov Gallery is one of the world's largest museums of Russian fine art, founded on the basis of the collection of the Moscow merchants and patrons of the arts, brothers Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov. The museum's main building is a complex in Lavrushinsky Lane with a facade designed to resemble an old Russian terem (tower-house), created to sketches by the artist Viktor Vasnetsov in 1902–1904.

The gallery's history is usually traced back to 1856, when Pavel Tretyakov acquired his first paintings by contemporary Russian artists — "Temptation" by Nikolai Schilder and "Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers" by Vasily Khudyakov. The collector aimed to create a national museum of Russian painting and, over the following decades, purchased works by the Peredvizhniki (the Wanderers): Ivan Kramskoi, who gave much help in shaping the collection, Ilya Repin, Vasily Surikov, Nikolai Ge, Ivan Shishkin, and other masters, often acquiring canvases directly from their studios or at exhibitions. In 1867 the collection opened to the public in the Tretyakov mansion as the "Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov," and by 1892 it numbered 1,276 paintings, 471 drawings, 10 sculptures by Russian artists, and 84 works by foreign masters.

In 1892, after the death of his brother Sergei, Pavel Tretyakov donated the combined collection to the city of Moscow; by decision of the city duma he was appointed lifetime curator of the gallery and continued to select works for the exhibition. The building was repeatedly expanded as the collection grew, and after Tretyakov's death in 1898 management passed to a Board of Trustees that included Valentin Serov, Igor Grabar, and other figures of the art world.

After the revolution, by a decree of 3 June 1918, the gallery was nationalized and given the status of the country's principal art museum; its holdings were expanded with nationalized private collections, including those of Sergei Shchukin and the Morozov brothers. From 1926 the museum was headed by the architect Alexei Shchusev, under whom new wings were added to the complex in 1927–1935. In 1985 the State Picture Gallery on Krymsky Val was joined to the Tretyakov Gallery, forming a single museum complex: the historic building in Lavrushinsky Lane houses art from the earliest times to the 1910s, while the building on Krymsky Val houses 20th-century art. Today the museum's collection numbers more than 180,000 works of painting, sculpture, and graphic art created from the 11th to the 20th century, including icon painting that Tretyakov himself began acquiring as early as the 1890s.