Art Review: Van Gogh at Morozov Collection

This is the last of three stories on The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art, on view at the Vuitton Foundation in Paris. It’s a brilliant and landmark exhibition. It’s the first time that the art owned by Mikhail and Ivan Morozov, two Moscow brothers, has been shown together. Most of the art has been split among the Pushkin and the Hermitage for 70 years. Few of its hoard of Gauguins, Van Goghs, Cézannes, Renoirs, and Monets have traveled. Together, the Morozov Collection has to be among the most comprehensive, insofar as French fin-de-siècle avant-garde painting goes, and among the best.

Mikhail, the older of the two brothers by a year, died suddenly in 1911 at 31. He collected for only five years. Ivan bought heavily for a few more, going to dealers in Paris, plopping down on a deep-cushioned easy chair, and inspecting paintings as they were showed to him one right after the other. The onset of war in the late summer of 1914 made travel difficult for him. Ivan and his family were in Moscow and St. Petersburg through 1920, when they fled Russia. After the December 1918 Bolshevik coup, his art was nationalized, though Ivan was insultingly appointed its “deputy director.” He died in the Bohemian spa town Carlsbad in 1921, waiting for bad times in Moscow to pass, which they never did.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

This is the last of three stories on The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art, on view at the Vuitton Foundation in Paris. It’s a brilliant and landmark exhibition. It’s the first time that the art owned by Mikhail and Ivan Morozov, two Moscow brothers, has been shown together. Most of the art has been split among the Pushkin and the Hermitage for 70 years. Few of its hoard of Gauguins, Van Goghs, Cézannes, Renoirs, and Monets have traveled. Together, the Morozov Collection has to be among the most comprehensive, insofar as French fin-de-siècle avant-garde painting goes, and among the best.

Mikhail, the older of the two brothers by a year, died suddenly in 1911 at 31. He collected for only five years. Ivan bought heavily for a few more, going to dealers in Paris, plopping down on a deep-cushioned easy chair, and inspecting paintings as they were showed to him one right after the other. The onset of war in the late summer of 1914 made travel difficult for him. Ivan and his family were in Moscow and St. Petersburg through 1920, when they fled Russia. After the December 1918 Bolshevik coup, his art was nationalized, though Ivan was insultingly appointed its “deputy director.” He died in the Bohemian spa town Carlsbad in 1921, waiting for bad times in Moscow to pass, which they never did.