Irina Sokolova, Curator of Dutch Painting at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has published The Russian Passion for Dutch Painting of the Golden Age. The Collection of Pyotr Semenov and the Art-Market in St Petersburg, 1860-1910. This book is the first volume in a new Brill book series: Oud Holland Book Series.

From the publisher, 28 August 2015

In The Russian Passion for Dutch Painting of the Golden Age, Irina Sokolova presents the collection of paintings created by Pyotr Petrovich Semenov-Tyan-Shansky (1827–1914), an outstanding scholar and Russian statesman during the era of liberal reforms in Russia. Not only did this man of great erudition assemble a unique body of more than 700 works by Dutch and Flemish masters, but he pushed hard to ensure that it entered the Imperial Hermitage in 1914. His activities as a collector have until recently remained largely unknown. For the first time in English, this richly illustrated book unfolds the history of Semenov’s gallery against the background of cultural and artistic life in St Petersburg and the close ties between Russian and European connoisseurs of his time.

Oud Holland Book Series

This peer reviewed book series focuses on scholarly publications (monographs, edited volumes, catalogues) on visual arts in the Netherlands up to 1900. The Oud Holland Book Series is closely related to the journal Oud Holland, Quarterly for Dutch Art History, the oldest surviving art historical journal in the world.

Series Editor: R.E.O. Ekkart

The Russian Passion for Dutch Painting of the Golden Age. The Collection of Pyotr Semenov and the Art-Market in St Petersburg, 1860-1910.
Irina Sokolova
448 pp. 323 color & b/w illus.
Leiden (BRILL) 2015
ISBN13: 9789004292413

For more information visit Brill’s website.