But the empress had no intention of relinquishing these purchases, which had established her reputation as Europe’s foremost collector of art. There was a failed bid to raise public funds to try to buy back the paintings. government buy the Walpole collection and house it. Massie in his biography, “Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Queen.”Ī Walpole heir called the sale a “theft.” There had been talk of having the U.K. “ More than a collection of paintings was being removed from the country a whole chapter of British history and culture was being shipped away,” wrote Robert K. Heavily burdened by debt, George Walpole sold about two hundred paintings to Catherine in 1779.

But Walpole’s heirs struggled to maintain the collection’s home in stately Houghton Hall. It included works by Rembrandt and other masters of the Dutch Golden Age. Paul Getty Museum.Catherine II walking by V.Borovikovskiy (1794, Tretyakov gallery), image in public domain from Wikipedia.Ĭatherine II of Russia (1729–1796) touched off a storm of public indignation in England with what British people saw as her raid on a national treasure.īefore his death in 1745, Britain’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, had created one of the finest collections of European paintings of his time. She is the author of A Love for the Beautiful: Discovering America's Hidden Art Museums and lives in Los Angeles, California, where She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Stanford Susan Jaques is a journalist specializing in art. Petersburg, and the magnificent architectural wonder the city became is largely her doing. Catherine also spearheaded the further expansion of St. She was a self-proclaimed 'glutton for art' and she would be responsible for the creation of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world, second only to the Louvre.

She felt that the best way to do this was through a ravenous acquisition of art, which Catherine often used as a form of diplomacy with other powers throughout Europe. Intelligent and determined, Catherine modeled herself off of her grandfather in-law, Peter the Great, and sought to further modernize and westernize Russia.

She then staged a coup that ended with him being strangled with his own scarf in the halls of the palace, and she being crowned the Empress of Russia. A German princess who married a decadent and lazy Russian prince, she mobilized support amongst the nobles, playing off of her husband's increasing corruption and abuse of power.

This is an art-oriented biograph of the mighty Catherine the Great, who rose from seemingly innocuous beginnings.

The Empress of Art by Susan Jaques