Today in History—March 17: When Russia’s Masterpieces Came to America
On this day in 1941, U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a dedication speech to some 6,000 guests in the rotunda of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., accepting the new museum on behalf of the nation. He praised Andrew Mellon, who, before his death in 1937, had donated his art collection, funds to construct the building, and an endowment to grow the institution.
What FDR didn’t mention was that some of Mellon’s art had been secretly purchased from Russia a decade earlier.
Amid Mellon’s bequest were 21 paintings he had acquired in the early 1930s from the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. The Hermitage opened in 1852, making accessible to Russian citizens the extraordinary art that had been collected by the Romanov dynasty, including Catherine the Great.
As a public museum, the Hermitage was expected to safeguard these works for future generations—not to sell them to private buyers abroad.
Yet that is precisely what happened.
During the late 1920s the Soviet government, desperate to finance Joseph Stalin’s Five-Year Plan to industrialize the Soviet Union, ordered the sale of valuable cultural objects. Authorities initially tried selling furniture, silver, and other goods seized from the aristocracy, church, and imperial court during the Russian Revolution. But public auctions in Vienna and Berlin brought disappointing sales—and lawsuits from Russian émigrés claiming the items were stolen property.
Fourteen Fabergé eggs were among the goods sold to foreign buyers.
When Mellon made his first purchase in 1930, the Soviet strategy had changed. Rather than auctioning lesser objects, officials quietly offered masterpieces from the Hermitage to wealthy foreign buyers. Mellon was not the only customer, but he was one of the most important, spending nearly $6.7 million acquiring works by Rembrandt, Titian, Raphael, and other old masters.
Mellon’s Soviet acquisitions were disclosed in the mid-1930s during his tax-evasion trial (which ended in a posthumous acquittal), but by the time the National Gallery opened, controversy over his questionable dealings had largely faded. Few people dwelled on the fact that many of the paintings Americans now celebrated had arrived in Washington only because another nation, in a moment of economic desperation, had parted with its cultural treasures.
- 24,000: Estimated number of objects taken from the Hermitage to be sold
- $1 million: Amount Andrew Mellon paid for Raphael’s The Alba Madonna (c. 1510)
- $100 million: Paid in 2004 by Russian oil tycoon Viktor Vekselberg to buy back 200 Fabergé objects (including 9 eggs) that were seized from the Romanov family and sold
- 1898: First successful test of a modern submarine off the coast of Staten Island, N.Y.
- 1930: Construction begins on the Empire State Building
- Today: The feast of St. Patrick of Ireland is celebrated
