The collection of paintings at the Hermitage in St Petersburgh date from 1764 and were greatly expanded through Catherine the Great's buying of Prussian, French and British collections. This process continued in Soviet times through the nationalisation of private colleactions.
This small guidebook contains 160 pages and includes paintings from Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Flanders, Holland, Germany, France and England.
Aurora Art Publishers were mainly responsible for bringing to the attention of the wider art world Old Masters, 19th century and modern art, and Russian paintings in Soviet collections.
This book, published in 1989, addresses the first two areas and is illustrated in [mainly] black and white, and colour. Unfortunately the former are often dark and the latter rather muddy. The translation is good.
In the last 10-15 years many other books from Aurora and Western publishers have appeared illustrating these and similar pictures from Russia and these have significant advantages in terms of content, page size and quality of reproduction. However, this is an important reminder of just how recently these paintings were so little known in the West and how widely exhibitions over the last decade or two have sought out their paintings.