1914
During the period of changes in the Russian art there were two dominant trends, each of which was fulfilled with significance and meaning. It is about “plein-air”, impressionistic, decorative and symbolic tendencies of development of national art, adequately reflected in the collection.
Passing the "peredvizhniki" phase of questions about the fate of socially oppressed people, the art of the late XIX century turns toward the intimate and hidden, to the spiritual values of the average people of the time.
Especially valuable part of the collection consists of works by Vasily Polenov. Landscape "Nile. Beach in Thebes" (1914) was written on the basis of a sketch of 1881 that is located at the Tretyakov Gallery.