Description
Book SynopsisThe first English-language account of Ivan Morozov and his ambition to build one of the world’s greatest collections of modern art
Trade Review“[A] jewel-like focus yet epic scope, reads as sumptuously as a 19th-century novel, and makes stunning use of material still emerging from Soviet archives to illuminate dark corners of history”—Jackie Wullschläger,
Financial Times“A century of Russian culture distilled in the story of the life, family and collection of the lavish, lazy, kindly, eccentric grandson of a serf who brought Monet and Matisse to Moscow, waited three years for the right “blue Gauguin”—and survived the first years of Bolshevik rule.”—Jackie Wullschläger,
Financial Times ‘Best Books of 2020: Visual Arts’
“Semenova was wise to widen the focus, and make this the biography of a family, and also of a collection...The descriptions of their activities read like raw material for Gogol or Dostoevsky.”– Martin Gayford,
Spectator “A narrative skilfully told by the art historian Natalya Semenova”—Martin Bentham,
Evening Standard“Natalya Semenova, who told the story of Shchukin and his collection three years ago, now brings her expertise and narrative verve to the less well-known Morozov.”—Lesley Chamberlain, Times Literary Supplement
“After [Semenova’s] exhaustive searches, it is difficult to imagine what further revelations might usurp her volumes on Morozov and Shchukin as the definitive studies of their patronage.”—Rosalind P. Blakesley,
Literary Review “This book is a tribute to the commitment of a patron of the arts and a timely warning about the arbitrary power of the state to destroy and mishandle material.”—Alexander Adams, Alexander Adams Art
“Drawing on a lifetime of research, Natalya Semenova has produced a riveting biography of an intensely private man who became one of the world's greatest collectors of modern art. Her pioneering account of the life and times of Ivan Morozov restores a vital lost page in the cultural history of imperial Russia. Morozov's importance has always been unfairly eclipsed by the better-known and more flamboyant Sergei Shchukin. Natalya Semenova has been able to redress the balance, and her latest biography completes a magnificent diptych chronicling the life and times of Russia's two great collectors.”—Rosamund Bartlett
