Mykolaiv Art Museum is one of Ukraine’s oldest museums. In 2014 it will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Mykolaiv Art Museum is well known abroad, particularly due to the fact that it bears the name of one of the 19th-century most popular artists Vasily Vereshchagin.
Russian painter of battle pieces Vasily Vereshchagin known not only as an author of world famous paintings The Apotheosis of War, The Mortally Wounded, A Forgotten Soldier, and Taj Mahal in Agra. The researcher-ethnographer and traveler, he was an implacable opponent of the unjust war of conquest and not by chance he was among the first nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize.
During the Russo-Turkish War in the second half of the 19th century, which was conducted, in particular, from the territory of modern Ukraine, Vereshchagin was in the theater of operations. He left his studio in Paris and was admitted to the Danube Army chief aid with the right of free movement in the troops. Sufferings caused by war reflected in paintings of the artist. Progressive world’s press already back in the 19th century wrote positively about artistic work of Vereshchagin. Particularly, at the openings of his exhibitions in the United States the American journalists called him a “great artist, because in each of his paintings there is a thought and he always refers to the present.”
There was another fact that linked Vereshchagin to Ukraine. In the 1860s he was among the team of the authors of the album “Picturesque Ukraine.”
The Art Museum in Mykolaiv was opened in 1914 to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Vereshchagin on the battleship Petropavlovsk during the Russo-Japanese War. The museum soon became a kind of a monument to the famous artist.
Paintings by Vereshchagin were transferred to Mykolaiv by his widow Lidia Vereshchagina. The works by the artist from private collection of Russian Emperor Nicholas II are also presented here.
Of course, now in museum collection there are not only paintings by Vereshchagin. Here you can find many classics of painting: Ivan Aivazovsky, Ivan Repin, Nikolai Rerikh, and Tetiana Yablonska. Museum collection survived two difficult wars. The period between 1941 and 1944 was especially debilitating for the museum, when the collection was on the verge of complete extinction. Just because during bombings shells miraculously “missed” the museum building, it was possible to preserve the core of the collection-works by Vereshchagin. However, after the war, Mykolaiv Art Museum was still able to restore its potential and even, moreover, to increase it.
Museum’s research staff always works on paintings restoration. As Serhii Rosliakov, director of the Art Museum told The Day, in the past 10 years within the framework of the program “Revival of Masterpieces” eight big paintings were restored, among them is the large canvas by Vereshchagin Eagles. A Forgotten Soldier with area of 15 square meters. That is why it is not surprising that Mykolaiv collection of fine art works is now one of Ukraine’s best in terms of quality and quantity.
