2010 | Sunday, May 9 to Saturday, May 22

Art Treasures of Western Russia

Tour Guides: Gary Faigin & Leonid Gervits

Double Occupancy:$5,950* and Single Occupancy: $7,750*

DISCOVERING THE ART OF RUSSIA
Russia remains an enigma for many Americans, a land not quite Asian, nor fully European, much less visited than the crowded tourist destinations of Western Europe, and much less understood. This custom Gage tour, unlike any others we know of, focuses on the rich heritage of Russian art and architecture as displayed in the sister capitals of St. Petersburg and Moscow, where we will explore the churches, museums, palaces, and monuments that make the Russian cultural heritage so unique.

 

One of the most remarkable features of this tour is the opportunity to experience the world’s greatest collection of Russian visual art produced during the era of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekov, Tchaikovsky, and Mussorgsky – many of whose portraits we will see. The realist works produced by Repin, Serov, Levitan, and their compatriots is comparable in breadth and quality to the novels, plays and symphonies of their much more famous contemporaries, but as most of their greatest paintings have never left Russia, they are nearly unknown in the West. Two museums – one in Moscow, one in St. Petersburg – contain virtually all of their major works, and we will give these amazing canvases the time they deserve.

 

Of course, our memorable visual arts experiences don’t stop there! The Impressionist and Post-Impressionists were collected in great quantity and quality by Russian connoisseurs, adding to a brilliant array of Old Masters previously amassed by the Russian royalty. We will also see many key works of the Russian Constructivists and Supremacists, as well as the oddly fascinating propaganda paintings of Socialist Realism, and works that return to modernism in the Post-Soviet era.

 

Complementing this visual arts feast will be visits to artist homes now maintained as museums, including the country villa of the greatest of all 19th Century Russian painters, Ilya Repin. And of course, we will feast our eyes on the glittering interiors of the Russian Orthodox churches and Imperial palaces - the Kremlin and Red Square, the Hermitage and the center of St. Petersburg are short walks from our tour hotels. And in true Gage “insider” fashion, we will include exclusive artist studio visits, a tour of the Academy in St. Petersburg with former faculty member Gervits, gallery walks, and a meals at several well-regarded restaurants.

Our tour leader, Gage Artistic Director, NPR arts commentator, and renowned arts educator Gary Faigin is joined by a local guide in Moscow, and by Gage instructor and Russian native Leonid Gervits in St. Petersburg. Group tours are not the ideal way to visit every region, but Russia presents an ideal locale for the sort of expertly guided experience that Gage has offered arts aficionados for over 25 years.

 

MOSCOW
Our tour participants travel independently and convene late Sunday afternoon, May 9, in our lovely four-star hotel in the central historic district of Moscow, where we stay for five nights. Moscow is Russia’s largest city. It is also a city where remarkable wealth and irreconcilable poverty have existed side by side over the centuries, the upside of this we shall experience in the beauty and excess of the lavish palaces, golden-domed cathedrals and impressive art collections of its Imperial past.

We convene late in the afternoon on our first day, to meet and greet, and get oriented with a short walk around our historic neighborhood. An early evening is in order so that you can be fresh on Monday for your first very full day of cultural exploring.

 

We begin our touring in the literal heart of Moscow at the historic stone-walled Kremlin now listed as a Unesco World Heritage site. Like Rome, the Kremlin is the virtual center of the empire; the city spreads out in concentric circles around its fortifications and a “Zero Kilometre,” plaque just outside Resurrection Gate marks the spot where all roads in Russia are measured from. As the seat of Russian power, the Kremlin began as a citadel for the Tsars ; after the revolution of 1917, it became the headquarters of the Bolshevik communist regime. Now, the Kremlin houses the residence of the Russian president and his administration buildings along with an assemblage of stunning historic buildings including several Imperial palaces, now museums which we shall include in our day-long Kremlin tour.

 

The Kremlin also represents the spiritual center of Imperial Russia with five magnificent Orthodox cathedrals which served as the loci of royal coronations, weddings, christenings and burials. We visit these spectacular churches clustered together in Kremlin’s ‘Cathedral Square’ as we learn about the frescoes, tombs, thrones, icons and uniquely Eastern Christian iconostasis that decorate their complex interiors.

 

Our tour also includes the highlights of Red Square including the oft-photographed St. Basil’s Cathedral, a complex of multi-colored, highly decorated domes inspired by traditional Russian timber architecture. The interior of the cathedral is laid out with separate chapels, each filled with icons, painted walls and domes that provide an intimate and varied experience, in contrast to Western cathedrals with their massive naves and singular artistic style. (We may also consider a tour of Lenin’s Mausoleum, if the lines aren’t too long.)

 

We spend three rewarding sessions in the ‘old’ State Tretyakov Gallery, founded by Moscow industrialist and patron, Pavel Tretyakov (1832-1898), housing Russian fine art from medieval icons to late nineteenth century paintings. Located not far from the Kremlin, the gallery's collection includes spectacular paintings by the realist artists who were part of the same cultural milieu as Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky. One additional session is reserved for viewing the “new” Tretyakov Gallery which covers Russia’s Futurist and Social Realist art of the twentieth century.

 

For two sessions, we also visit the famed Pushkin Fine Arts Museum (founded 1898), named after the beloved Russian poet on the centenary of his death in 1937. The Pushkin is known for its rich holdings of European paintings—especially the French and Post-Impressionists, as well as an enviable collection of Old Masters from Botticelli to Rembrandt. With a breath of fresh ideological air, artworks by Russian-born artists, including Kandinsky and Chagall, have now been dusted off and are hanging on the museum’s walls.

 

Additional time has been reserved for visiting the studio and home museum of Pavel Korin, a prominent art figure of the early 20th century, who decided that he would devote his whole life to a single large painting based on the suppression of the Russian Orthodox church by the Soviets- in an effort to show what Russia had lost after the October Revolution. Korin left his controversial magnus opus “ Farewell to Rus,” unpainted after 42 years of effort in his studio filled with a huge white primed canvas and racks of extraordinary painting studies.

Late Friday afternoon, we transfer from our hotel by private coach to the Leningradsky Station to catch the Aurora which connects Moscow to St. Petersburg. Bring a picnic or eat in the dining car while you enjoy watching the tremendous forests of the Russian countryside fly by!

 

ST. PETERSBURG
St. Petersburg, the cultural capital of Russia, was founded in 1703 by Tsar Peter the Great on the banks of the Neva River. The city, a unique combination of Russian and European influences, is often referred to as “The Venice of the North” for its rich cultural heritage, elegant marble palaces and the 150 canals that transect its urban fabric. Upon our arrival, we are greeted by Professor Leonid Gervits, St. Petersburg native, Gage guest instructor, and teacher for 10 years at the Repin Institute of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts before his emigration to New York, where he currently teaches at the Art Students League. We spend the next week discovering the riches of St. Petersburg with Faigin and Gervits rotating lead guide roles for our tour highlights.

 

As a complement to our Tretyakov touring, we spend three sessions in Russia’s first public museum, the ‘State Russian Museum,’ which traces the entire history of Russian art from the tenth to the twentieth century. Opened in 1898 and housed in the Mikhailovsky Palace, the collection has grown substantially over the past century with artworks acquired from estates, nationalized collections and elite Russian cultural institutions. The museum collection reflects every form and genre of art in Russia, including the world’s finest collection of Russian avant-garde art from the turn of the 20th century. We will focus on the “Golden Age” of Russian painting, which began roughly in the 1860s and began to disperse in the 1880s—a time of spectacular achievements in the realm of Russian literature, music and painting.

Like the Tretyakov, the State Russian Museum includes a major repository of the works of Ilya Repin, the 19th century painter whose psychologically-moving realist works are beloved by the Russian people. Ukraine-born, Repin trained in Saint Petersburg and travelled to Italy and Paris as an art student. In 1878, he joined the free-thinking artist group "The Itinerants" who travelled through the Russian countryside, painting and exhibiting their artworks.

 

To further our understanding of the life and influences of Repin, we take a short train trip to ‘Penates,’ the sprawling country home Repin designed for himself just north of the city in a region that was then a territory of Finland. After the 1917 October Revolution, Repin politely refused to return to Russia, instead devoting his time to religious subjects painted with innovative treatments. We tour the studio where Repin worked and the living rooms of his fascinating home which is listed as one of St. Petersburg’s World Heritage sites.

 

We also visit St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the largest Orthodox cathedral in Russia, built during the reign of Nicholas I with impressively decorated facades and interiors. During the Soviet years, the church became a museum of atheism but now displays its expansive installations of 19th century painting and sculptural works by over 200 artists including the huge cupola painting by Karl Briullov, walls murals by Briullov and Piotr Basin, Fedor Bruni among many others. During our visit, we encourage our most energetic participants to climb the 262 steps to the colonnade walkway of this fourth tallest cathedral in the world, to see a magnificent panoramic view of central St. Petersburg.
The grand Hermitage Museum is not to be missed and we have reserved two full days in this magnificent complex of buildings along the embankment of the River Neva. Much of the museum collection is housed in the elegant 18th century Winter Palace, which was once the St. Petersburg residence of the Russian tsars. The museum owns an astounding 3,000,000 artifacts and presents the development of world culture from the Stone Age to the 20th century.

 

Our touring focuses on the Hermitage picture galleries of Western European art. With 120 rooms in four museum buildings, we limit ourselves to the outstanding masterpieces of Italy, Spain, Holland, Flanders, France, England, and German by such greats as Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Velazquez, de Goya, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Reynolds—the list is exhaustive! We also cannot neglect the outstanding collections of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works, plus canvases by Picasso and Matisse, in the Modern European art galleries. We are honored to meet with the Deputy Director of the Hermitage, Gerald Meister, to learn about the museum’s collections from his curatorial perspective.

 

Our touring focuses on the Hermitage picture galleries of Western European art. With 120 rooms in four museum buildings, we limit ourselves to the outstanding masterpieces of Italy, Spain, Holland, Flanders, France, England, and German by such greats as Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Velazquez, de Goya, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Reynolds—the list is exhaustive! We also cannot neglect the outstanding collections of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works, plus canvases by Picasso and Matisse, in the Modern European art galleries. We are honored to meet with the Deputy Director of the Hermitage, Gerald Meister, to learn about the museum’s collections from his curatorial perspective.

 

We also reserve one day for the hour-long hydrofoil trip from the Winter Palace to the pier of Petrodvorets on the Gulf of Finland, the extravagant summer estate of Peter the Great. Commissioned on a grand scale in 1714, the francophile Tsar intended his palatial complex to rival Versailles with its breathtaking cascade of fountains from the Grand Palace to the Gulf; its ten majestic palaces, and the country’s first picture gallery of art in Peter’s favorite palace, Monplaisir. Although the ceremonial opening took place in 1723, construction on Petrodvorets continued for another 150 years. The Grand Palace was badly damaged by the Nazis in WWII, but the interiors have now been carefully restored and are truly opulent. You are welcome to have lunch in one of the many cafes and restaurants scattered around the estate while you enjoy the magnificent views across the estate.

Thursday evening is planned for our final group meal, a farewell of friends and an opportunity to sample more delicacies from the Russian kitchen. We have invited Eugene Maximov, the Chair of the Painting Department of the St. Petersburg Academy to join us.

 

Our final day in St. Petersburg, we visit the Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, opened in 1757. The Academy is located in a sumptuous Neoclassical edifice, commissioned by Catherine the Great, with a quayside adorned by two 3000-year-old Egyptian sphinxes. From its inception, the academy sent its most notable Russian painters abroad, in order to learn from the classical and Renaissance styles of Italy and France. As Western art of the 20th century embraced the modern in art, the highly-competitive St. Petersburg Academy nourished its students on Soviet Socialist Realism which show in its highly refined contemporary practitioners. The school also assembled a sizable collection of fine artworks for study and copying, which we will enjoy touring. During our ‘insider’ visit, we meet with Maximov and various students from the school.

 

At the end of our exciting, exclusive and exhaustive tour of the Art Treasures of Western Russia, on Saturday, May 22, we depart from our hotel and you head back to the United States or onto your next exciting international destination.

The above Tour Itinerary is preliminary and may change based on new opportunities that afford themselves, and unfortunate closures due to circumstances beyond our control. As we get closer to our 2010 tour date, our Art Treasures of Russian Art tour participants shall receive a finalized day-by-day Tour Itinerary.

*prices shown are Early Bird and expire on 12/31/09. Regular tour prices are: Double Occupancy: $6,450 and Single Occupancy: $8,250.

To reserve your place on this tour, pay your deposit online, complete the booking form and send it along with a photocopy of the first page of your current passport to Gage. (You may instead mail your deposit with your booking form and passport photocopy.)