The Morozov Collection -- at the Louis Vuitton Foundation

Valentin Sérov: portrait of Ivan Abramovitch Morozov 1910

Welcome to the Morozov Collection - subtitled "Icons of Modern Art". 170 works from Russia are on show at the Louis Vuitton Foundation until February 2022, covering a period of art from 1890 to 1918, through Impressionism to Post-Impressionism. For anyone who saw the Shchukin Collection exhibition 5 years ago, this is a marvellous complement.

Renoir: La Grenouillère 1869

Monet: Poppy Field 1890-91

Pissarro: Autumn Morning at Eragny 1897

Alfred Sisley: Outskirts of Fontainebleau Forest 1885

Both collections were created thanks to the wealth produced by textile manufacture, but also from the artistic dreams of Russians who then left their treasures to posterity.

Whereas Shchukin (1854-1936) followed his instincts, Ivan Morozov (1871-1921) was more systematic in building up the collection he shared with his elder brother Mikhail. Mikhail had died young at 33 years old in 1903. Ivan took advice from his Russian artist friends, unlike Shchukin who went from one passion to another. It was the elder brother Mikhail who initiated the art collection. Enthusiastic about art and history, Mikhail was interested in the cultural scene in Moscow and Paris and had a bold instinct for buying art works. He was the first to show Van Gogh and Munch in Russia.

Mikhail Morozotov by Russian painter Valentin Sérov in 1902

His portrait by Sérov, the year before he died shows him in slightly comic stance, compared with his younger brother's portrait by the same artist at the beginning of this article. Ivan looks more like a member of parliament or a banker!  

Emulating perhaps Shchukin's collection and rivalling European collections such as that of the Steins in Paris, the 2 Morozov brothers acquired masterpieces by leading avant garde artists. Morozov had few Picassos, unlike Shchukin who owned 50 works by the artist.  There are 3 Picassos on view in the exhibition. Here are two of them, from the beginning of the artist's pink period and from his cubist period. 

Picasso: Young acrobat on a ball. 1905

Picasso: Portrait of Ambroise Vollard. 1910

It is amazing how Picasso's cubist portraits split up the figure so much but still manage to look like the person! Vollard was the well-known Paris art dealer, who supported Cézanne. 

A whole room of Cézannes surround the visitor. Ivan Morozov would have liked to have been a painter himself and Cézanne was his favourite painter (he told Félix Fénéon in his only interview in 1920). Ivan was very methodical in building up the collection. We follow Cézanne from his dark and Romantic beginnings to his apotheosis in the series of the St. Victoire mountain near his native town of Aix.

Cézanne:  Young Girl at the Piano (1869/70)

Cézanne: Montagne Sainte-Victoire 1896/98

Following Russian taste, the paintings are all framed in gold frames.

A roomful of colourful and exotic Gauguins is one of the joys of this exhibition.

Gauguin: Eu haere ia oe (Where are you going?)/ Woman holding a fruit 1893

 An earlier Gauguin takes us back to the period when the artist shared a house with Van Gogh in Arles.

Gauguin: Café in Arles 1888

Van Gogh: Seascape at Saintes-Maries 1888

2 Van Goghs are presented here. The 1st is a marvellous seascape (see above) where the thick impasto oil paint conveys the movement of the waves. The second, beautifully lit, is displayed in a room of its own:

Van Gogh: The Prison Courtyard 1890

The painting is thought to convey Van Gogh's mood of isolation and confinement when he was in the asylum in Provence, and is a coloured interpretaton of an engraving by Gustave Doré which was sent to him by his brother Theo.

Some brightly coloured fauve paintings feature in the exhibition, such as Derain's harbour scene:

André Derain:  Drying the Sails 1905

Another of the pleasures of the Morozov Collection are the decorative panels by Pierre Bonnard. (Bonnard was an artist missing from the Shchukin Collection.) The panels Morozov commissioned of Bonnard were painted in the St Tropez area in 1911. They were installed in Ivan Morozov's great staircase in his Moscow mansion. Being enveloped in a warm sunny Mediterranean atmosphere must have been a great comfort for Morozov in wintry Moscow:

 Bonnard's views from the window over Normandy landscapes and his decorative, colourful still lifes contain a poetic harmony which appealed strongly to Ivan Morozov.

Bonnard: Train and Barges 1909

Bonnard's younger Russian contemporary Mikhail Larionov, life-long partner of Natalia Goncharova (see below), painted similar sunny compositions:

Mikhail Larionov: The Window, Tiraspol 1909

There are some strikingly colourful still lifes and landscapes on view by Matisse. 

Matisse: Fruit and bronze 1910

This is the still life which features in the Sérov portrait at the head of this article. It was commissioned by Ivan Morozov when he visited Matisse's studio in 1908 in the company of Shchukin.

The following triptych of paintings was commissioned by Morozov in 1912:

Matisse: View from window, part of Moroccan Triptych

Matisse: Zorah on the Terrace

Matisse: Entrance to the Kasbah 1912/13

The 3 works, painted as an ensemble, were split up for twenty years when the combined Collections were dispersed in 1948. Matisse used colour to paint space. He painted his emotions, rather than transcribing nature. 

Matisse's influence was primordial for Russian artists. The Morozovs collected Russian artists, unlike Shchukin. The Russian works were displayed on the ground floor of their house, with the French art on the first floor, open only to a select few, whereas Shchukin kept a more open house. 

Pyotr Konchalovsky Self- portrait. 1912 Private Collection: P. Aven

Pyotr Konchalovsky (1876-1956) was a prolific Russian painter who studied in Moscow, Paris and St Petersburg. He was a founder member of the 'Jack of Diamonds' group, artists who favoured a Cézannian-fauve-primitive style.

Another member of the same Moscow avant-garde movement was Natalia Goncharova:

Goncharova: Orchard in autumn. 1909

Born in Russia in 1881, Natalia Goncharova was at the forefront of Russian artists but later lived in Paris and became a French citizen. Her style ranged from Primitivism to Cubism and was influenced by Russian folk art. Autumnal sunlight pervades the above agricultural scene. The work was shown at the opening exhibition of the 'Jack of Diamonds' group in Moscow in 1910-11. 

An example of Russian cubism is to be seen in Malevitch's Portrait of Matyushin:

Malevitch:  Portrait of Mikhail Matyushin  1913-14

Kazimir Malevitch is usually associated with Suprematism, which gives the viewer something essential to contemplate- like a white square on a white background. The cubist portrait on show here is rather more of a puzzle than the Picasso portrait above. We might guess by the piano keys in the centre that Matyushin was a pianist or a composer - he was! Cubism was less to Ivan Morozov's personal liking than to Shchukin's, but he completed his collection, wishing to give a panorama of French and Russian artists. 

Ivan Morozov preferred the poetic vision of the Nabis school or Russian Symbolists, like  Pyotr Utkin, or Armenian artist Martiros Sarian:

Martiros Sarian: By the Pomegranate Tree 1907

The exhibition starts with realistic portraits of eminent Russians and works upwards (literally- the exhibition is on 4 ascending floors) through colourful Impressionist and post-Impressionist works to a poetic, dreamlike vision of the story of Psyche, commissioned by Morozov of Symbolist painter Maurice Denis. This ensemble of paintings was made for Morozov's 'Salon Blanc' or music room. The Louis Vuitton Company provided the funds to recreate Morozov's music room in the Hermitage museum, St Petersburg.

Maurice Denis: The vengeance of Venus (The story of Psyche)  1908

The dazzling atmosphere is recreated here in the final room of the exhibition. 13 panels painted by Maurice Denis (who chose the subject of Psyche) are complemented by bronze statues by Maillol and large ceramic vases decorated by Maurice Denis himself.

Maillol: Spring 1911

In 1918, after the First World War and the October Revolution, the Morozov possessions were appropriated by the Soviet government and made a national treasure, along with Shchukin's. In 1928, during the Stalin era, the Morozov works were displayed along with the Shchukin Collection in the Morozov mansion. Then the collections were dispersed. The collectors' names were detached from the works and erased from the collective memory. It is fitting that their names have been restored to the collections (since the 60s) and live on. Shchukin and Morozov had originally envisaged a panorama of French works from David to Matisse which would be shown in the Tretiakov gallery, named after the first Moscow collector of French paintings (the Barbizon school).

The works on show are now housed in three of Russia's great museums: the St Petersburg Hermitage, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and, for the Russian artists, the Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow. It is a wonderful opportunity to see them reunited here in Paris.

It is worth going  further up in the Gehry designed building, which houses the exhibition, to see the panoramic views from the top floor.

Exhibition: La Collection Morozov

 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, 8 ave. Mahatma Gandhi, 75116 Paris

Metro: Les Sablons

Open Monday to Thursday 10am to 8pm

Friday from 10am to 11pm

Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 9pm

Closed Tuesdays.

From 22 September 2021 until  3 April 2022

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