State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg)

This small (7" x 7") book contains paintings from the Russian Museum in Leningrad. The introduction is fairly superficial, as would be expected from such a small book, focusing instead on the reproductions of the pictures themselves. Unfortunately, the reproductions are rather low quality -- the muted and/or poor quality of the colors, as well as the choice of pictures -- make this a less than ideal book to experience the beauty of Russian art. Russian art has some outstanding landscape painters, but because the small format of this book, all the landscapes look rather unimpressive. The pictures are laid out in somewhat chronological order, and thus, one gets an idea of the progression of Russian painting through the centuries. The introduction itself is very basic. The best I can say about this book is that it serves as a way of quickly finding the names of artists or works that are considered important to Russian art . You can flip through it, find a painting that looks interesting, then go to the library and find more detailed information and a better reproduction elsewhere.… (més)