Catherine the Great
The Art Gallery of Toronto hosts an exhibition of Catherine the Great’s art collection from Russia’s Hermitage Museum. We braved the thick crowds of art-perusers to check it out on Saturday.
The word “treasures” in the tagline had me expecting a juicy helping of masterpieces but the accent here is more on history than top-notch paintings. Catherine was a dedicated art patron but an even more fervent propagandist for herself, so what you get are a series of stiffly monumental neo-classical portraits of herself and her favored family members, along with similarly large and stuffy works from mostly forgotten masters. Poussin and Joshua Reynolds are as top-drawer as it gets. Catherine also collected Rembrandts and Raphaels but the Hermitage did not let those escape its clutches. The kitschy centerpiece of the show is an extraordinarily ornate rococo coronation carriage, crawling with lions, cherubs, and freaky dolphins, which she did not commission and reflected an earlier taste. Also included is a selection of decorative arts, so if cameos, china, jeweled boxes or miniature obelisks with gilded fittings are your thing, you might dig those. This is one show where the tatty vulgarity of the gift shop is in no way a contrast with the show preceding it.
All told, there’s more to be gleaned from reading the accompanying text than in contemplating the artwork. Especially memorable is the exegesis behind a huge painting celebrating the victory of Catherine’s navy against the Turks. The original version of the painting was rejected as insufficiently realistic, and Catherine arranged to explode a decommissioned Russian vessel so the artist could render the light effects properly. She was not only usurper, conqueror and salon hostess, but the Jerry Bruckheimer of her day.
Recommended to history buffs and Russians, this well-mounted show proves its thesis in spades. It runs until January 1st and from there heads to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.