Saratov Art Museum

(full name, A. N. Radishchev Saratov Art Museum), the most important art museum in the outlying areas of the RSFSR.

Established in 1885, the Saratov Art Museum was the first provincial Russian art museum open to the public. It was founded by A. N. Radishchev’s grandson, the painter A. P. Bogoliubov, who donated his private collection to the city of Saratov. The St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and the Hermitage also donated works of art. In the early years of Soviet power the collection was greatly enlarged from the State Museum Fund, and the museum became one of the country’s major museums of Russian and Western European art. In 1965 the museum’s collection included more than 14,000 works of art.

The collection of Russian art includes works by V. L. Borovi-kovskii, K. P. Briullov, D. G. Levitskii, V. G. Perov, F. S. Roko-tov, I. E. Repin, V. I. Surikov, and S. T. Konenkov. In addition to a large exhibit of Bogoliubov’s pictures, there is an extensive collection of late-19th- and early-20th-century Russian art, including works by A. N. Benois, V. E. Borisov-Musatov, P. V. Kuznetsov, and V. A. Serov. The museum’s collection of Soviet art features works by A. V. Lentulov, N. P. Krymov, S. V. Gera-simov, A. T. Matveev, and V. I. Mukhina. Western European art is represented by works by J. Bassano, S. Rosa, D. Teniers, and A. Rodin. There is also a large collection of works by masters of the Barbizon school.