A Forgotten Legacy: The Romanov Patronage of Finland’s Early Art Collections

Abstract

The earliest art collections of Finland’s National Gallery came into being when, as the Grand Duchy of Finland, it was an autonomous part of imperial Russia (1809–1917). The prevailing view of Finnish museum studies, however, sees the Finnish Art Society, the precursor of the Finnish National Gallery, as being modelled on exclusively European cultural institutions. The history of the Society and its collections have thus been seen as resistant to any alien eastern influences, and as an attempt to differentiate Finnish culture from Russian art collecting practices. Drawing on the theoretical shift in cultural studies from the conception of stable, clearly demarcated cultural identities of nation states toward less rigidly defined identities, the aim of this essay is to reconstruct the hidden Russian presence in Finnish museum historiography. Based on original unpublished sources, my study shows that the earliest support of Finland’s cultural infrastructure was given by the Romanov patrons Nicholas I, Alexander II, and Alexander III. By exposing the absence and physical erasure of “imperial identity” in the official Finnish museum narrative, I reveal how museums can at once elevate particular discourses and practices while marginalizing other historical processes in a nation’s cultural past.

Keywords:

• Russian history
• Finnish history
• history of museums
• art history
• politics of memory

Notes

1. In the late twentieth century, the stable, clearly demarcated European cultural identities and notion of heritage shifted toward less rigidly defined ones. My understanding of identity draws on Sharon Macdonald’s definition, which rather than emphasising a community or a geographical area, focuses on person–object relations as they exist in space and time. By emphasising individual actors’ networks of interconnected practices surrounding material culture and objects, we can avoid geographical definitions and the risk of “freezing” identities. See Ayse Caglar, “Hyphenated Identities and the Limits of Culture,” in The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community, ed. Tariq Modood and Pnina Werbner (London: Zed Books, 1997), 169–85; Sharon Macdonald, Inside European Identities (Oxford: Berg, 1993), “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities,” in Museum and Society 1 (2003): 1–16; Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today (London: Routledge, 2013); and “Migrating Heritage, Networks and Networking: Europe and Islamic Heritage,” in Migrating Heritage: Experiences of Cultural Networks and Cultural Dialogue in Europe, ed. Perla Innocenti (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), 53–64.

2. See Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London: Routledge, 1995); Mieke Bal, Double Exposure: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (London: Routledge, 1996); Susan M. Pearce, On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London: Routledge, 1995); Sharon Macdonald, A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006; Iain Chambers et al., eds., The Postcolonial Museum: The Arts of Memory and the Pressures of History (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014).

3. According to the new museology the meanings of objects are contextual rather than inherent; because meaning is often plural there cannot be only one way of framing objects or narrating a story. For a detailed explanation, see Peter Vergo, The New Museology (London: Reaktion Books 1989), 3; Macdonald, “Collecting Practices,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, 82, 95.

4. Within the process of a collection’s institutionalisation, there is the possibility of the loss of information on the identity or origin of the collection. The Finnish National Gallery has safe-kept several artefacts with a Russian or a Russo-Finnish cultural identity, but these identities may have remained under- or misrecognised in the museum discourse. On materiality and identity in Finnish museum studies, see Elina Sopo, ”Venäjän taiteenkeräilyn kukoistuskausi Aleksanteri II aikakaudella. Kolmannen keräilysukupolven heijastus Sinebrychoffin taidemuseon kokoelmissa,” in Museon arvoinen kokoelma. Sinebrychoffin kokoelmatoiminnan vaikuttavuus, ed. Anu Niemelä and Teijamari Jyrkkiö (Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery, 2012), 14–30. For Russian studies, see Oleg Y. Neverov, Great Private Collections of Imperial Russia (New York: The Vendome Press, 2004), S. A. Ovsyannykova, Частное собирательство в пореформенную эпоху 1861—1917. Очерки истории музейного дела в России. Вып.2. M: Советская Россия. (Private collecting in the post-reform period 1861–1917: Essays on the history of museums in Russia), vol. 2 (Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1960), and Irina V. Saverkina, История частного коллекционирования в России. СПб: СПбГУКИ (The history of private collecting in Russia) (St. Petersburg: Academy of Arts and Culture, 2006).

5. Johan Jakob Tikkanen, Finska Konstföreningen, 1846–1896 (Helsinki: Central-Tryckeri, 1896); Aune Lindström, Ateneumin taidemuseo, 1863–1963 (Helsinki: Valtion Taidemuseo, 1963); Susanna Pettersson, Suomen Taideyhdistyksestä Ateneumiin. Fredrik Cygnaeus, Carl Gustaf Estlander ja taidekokoelman roolit (Helsinki: SKS/Valtion Taidemuseo, 2008); Hanne Selkokari, Kalleuksia Isänmaalle. Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä taiteen keräilijänä ja taidehistorioitsijana (Helsinki: Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen Aikakauskirja, 2008), Kai Kartio, The Beer King of Helsinki, The Czarina’s Personal Physician and Dutch Old Masters: Dutch and Flemish Paintings from the Paul and Fanny Sinebrychoff and Carl von Haartman Collections (Helsinki: Frenckellin Kirjapaino Oy, 1994), Marja-Liisa Rönkkö, Louvren ja Louisianan perilliset. Suomalainen taidemuseo (Helsinki: Valtion Taidemuseo, 1999), and Susanna Pettersson and Pauliina Kinanen, Suomen Museohistoria, ed. Susanna Pettersson and Pauliina Kinanen (Helsinki: SKS, 2010), 10.

6. Susanna Pettersson, “Donated Collections in the Sinebrychoff Art Museum,” in Sinebrychoff—From Art Collectors’ Home to Art Museum, ed. Minerva Keltanen (Helsinki: Sinebrychoff Art Museum Publications, 2003), 86–101; Hanne Selkokari, Kalleuksia Isänmaalle.

7. Pettersson, Suomen Taideyhdistyksestä Ateneumiin, 56, 298. A recent report associates the content and values represented by the Finnish Art Society with the western tradition; see Susanna Pettersson, “National Museums in Finland,” in Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, ed. Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (Linköping, Sweden: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011), 262.

8. Pettersson, Suomen Taideyhdistyksestä Ateneumiin, 56, 298; Susanna Pettersson, “Suspense and Jubilation, The Sinebrychoffs as Art Collectors,” in Sinebrychoff—From Art Collectors’ Home to Art Museum, ed. Minerva Keltanen (Helsinki: Sinebrychoff Art Museum Publications, 2003), 72, 77; Pettersson, “Donated Collections in the Sinebrychoff Art Museum,” 95.

9. Pettersson and Kinanen, Suomen Museohistoria, 415.

10. “In a generous and noble-minded way, not only the heir to the throne (the future Alexander II) exercised the patron’s vocation in the name of his son, but also the Supreme Patron of the Society (the future Alexander III) himself, until his death in 1894, through repeated donations, commissions and donated purchases, encouraged the art of Finland”; Tikkanen, Finska Konstföreningen, 19.

11. Carlo Ginzburg, ”Mikrohistoriasta,” in Johtolankoja. Kirjoituksia mikrohistoriasta ja historiallisesta metodista (Tampere, Finland: Gaudeamus, 1996), 167–81.

12. Macdonald, Companion to Museum Studies, 2–5, 113.

13. For example, Matti Klinge, Keisarin Suomi (Helsinki: Schildts, 1997). See also, Osmo Jussila, Suomen Suuriruhtinaskunta 1809–1917 (Helsinki: WSOY, 2004).

14. Klinge, Senaatintorin Sanoma: Tutkielmia Suuriruhtinaskunnan Ajalta (Helsinki: Otava, 1986), 34; Klinge refers to the premise of Finnish historical studies whereby some meanings have long been taken as a given as “nationalistic” and implicitly as “perspectivistic”; Matti Klinge, Suomalainen ja Eurooppalainen Menneisyys. Historiankirjoitus ja historiakulttuuri keisariaikana (Helsinki: SKS, 2010), 6.

15. Matti Klinge, A Brief History of Finland (Helsinki: Otava, 2000), 70.

16. Central Art Archives/Archive of the Finnish Art Society (CAA/STYA) refers to the minutes, appendixes, acts and correspondence between 1846 and 1919 of the Archive of the Finnish Art Society in the Central Art Archive at the Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki.

17. Macdonald, Companion to Museum Studies, 113.

18. Klinge, Senaatintorin Sanoma, 30.

19. The imperial period of Finland is traditionally divided into two main periods: the provincial period (1808–1861), when Finland was regarded as one of the privileged provinces of the Russian Empire, and the period of state separatism (1861–1917), when Finland enjoyed growing autonomy; Jussila, Suomen Suuriruhtinaskunta, 19; Mikhail Borodkin, История Финляндии. Времяимператора Александра (The History of Finland: The period of Alexander II) (St. Petersburg: State Typography, 1908).

20. On the theoretical shift from a regional to a situational perspective on the Russian Empire, see Alexei I. Miller, “Between Local and Inter-Imperial: Russian Imperial History in Search of Scope and Paradigm,” in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5 (Winter 2004): 7–26; Alexei I. Miller and Alfred J. Riebel, Imperial Rule (New York: Central European University Press, 2005), 13; Alexei I. Miller, The Romanov Empire and Nationalism: Essays in the Methodology of Historical Research (New York: Central European University Press, 2008), 2–4. See also Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), and Ilya Gerasimov, Jan Kusber, and Alexander Semyonov, eds., Russian History and Culture, Volume 1: Empire Speaks Out: Languages of Rationalization and Self-Description in the Russian Empire (Boston, MA: Brill, 2009).

21. “Instead of following the West, the Grand Duchy was encouraged to strengthen its own culture”; Matti Klinge, Ylioppilaskunnan Historia. Ensimmäinen Osa 1828–1852 (Porvoo, Finland: WSOY, 1967), 100, 116. This is considered to have been in harmony with Russia’s own national tendencies or Slavophilia.

22. The new approach was nurtured under the influence of Romanticism, the French Revolution, the Polish uprisings and European revolutions of the 1830s. Uvarov’s doctrine, “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” cannot be reviewed in depth here. In Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1959), Nicholas Riasanovsky was the first to see Uvarov’s program as “far from being mere propaganda or empty talk” (267); see also Nicholas Riasanovsky, Russia and the West in the Teachings of the Slavophiles: A Study of Romantic Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952). Similarly, Miller argues that the triad had negative connotations from the beginning and was first articulated by literary historian A. N. Pypin in 1875, which view was perpetuated in subsequent work (The Romanov Empire, 4, 139, 151). Riasanovsky, Mordvinov, and Miller studied the sources stemming directly from the author of the ideas, Uvarov, and governmental publications close to him, such as the Journal of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Ten Years of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment 1833–1843; Dmitry Mordvinov, Searching for an Imperial Ideology: The Concept of Nationality in the Works of Count Uvarov and the Journal of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment, 1833–1849 (Budapest: Central European University,2011), 44–45, 81–82. See also Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas 1, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 380–81.

23. Mordvinov, Searching for an Imperial Ideology, 122–23.

24. Alexei Miller, The Romanov Empire, 212, 140–59, 155.

25. Klinge, A Brief History of Finland, 116, 70.

26. Finnish was given equal status to Swedish in February 1865.

27. Miller, The Romanov Empire, 4.

28. Klinge, Ylioppilaskunnan Historia, 6, 92.

29. Pettersson, Suomen Taideyhdistyksestä Ateneumiin, 91–97.

30. The Finnish Literature Society was established in 1831, and the Academic Reading Society in 1846; Klinge, Ylioppilaskunnan Historia, 56, 90, 11, 139. According to Klinge, at the end of the 1840s the students numbered about 430–440 (6, 92).

31. Subjecthood, or the actors’ place in the chain of events, is central to my argument. As Miller puts it in The Romanov Empire: “the ‘construction’ of actors—which we inevitably engage in when we speak of imperial bureaucracy or even national movements as actors—does not have an effect as suffocating or obstructive when setting research goals as does the essentialisation of regions” (10). This view of the individual’s engagement with culture is also found in Antonio Gramsci’s concept of culture in Quaderni del Carcere, vols. 2-3 (Turin: Einaudi, 2001).

32. These also included the first chairman of the Finnish Art Society, the Senate member, procurator, Baron and collector Carl Johan Walleen (1781–1867); see Klinge, Ylioppilaskunnan Historia, 17, 19, 100, 142.

33. On the Finnish contacts with the Society in Poland, see CAA/STYA, 25 May/6 June 1874. Letter from The Comité de la société d’encouragement des beaux arts dans la Royame de Pologne.

34. On the Society in the Kingdom of Poland, see Gabriela Świtek, “Historia Gmachu Zachęty 1860–1945” (The History of the Zachęta Building 1860–1945), and Janina Wiercińska, “Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych. Początki organizacji” (The society for the encouragement of fine arts: The origins of the organization), in Zachęta 1860–2000 (Warsaw: Zachęta Nar. Galeria Sztuki, 2003).

35. On the history of the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, see also http://www.zacheta.art.pl/en/kolekcja. Accessed 18 January 2016. On the history of the National Museum in Warsaw, see http://www.mnw.art.pl/en/about-the-museum/history/ Accessed 18 January 2016.

36. CAA/STYA, undated, February 1846. Letter titled “Memorial to H.I.M. the Grand Duke, Tsarevich and the Heir to the Throne.”

37. CAA/STYA, St. Petersburg, 10/22 April 1846, Memorial, signed by Alexander Armfelt. A payment of 250 silver rubles in 50 shares for the first year to “support the Society’s own purposes.”

38. Mordvinov, Searching for an Imperial Ideology, 54.

39. Miller, The Romanov Empire, 68.

40. CAA/STYA, Helsinki, 17/29 April 1846. This is a free translation of the original source, rather than a literal rendition. All translations of primary sources in this article are my own.

41. According to Miller, loyalty has greater priority for an empire than a common national identity (The Romanov Empire, 54, 79). Klinge also sees patriotic loyalty and absolute trustworthiness (as expressed by the Society members) as a guiding principle of Finnish bureaucrats; (Ylioppilaskunnan Historia, 20–23, 80–82).

42. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 303; Klinge, Ylioppilaskunnan Historia, 76–82, Mordvinov, Searching for an Imperial Ideology, 18.

43. CAA/STYA, St. Petersburg, 1 December 1865, signed by Alexander Armfelt, 500 silver rubles by the Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich; St. Petersburg, 4 December 1865, signed by Alexander Armfelt, 300 silver rubles by the Emperor Alexander II; 12/24 April 1873, signed by Alexander Armfelt, 1,000 silver rubles to the Finnish Art Society by the Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich.

44. CAA/STYA, Helsinki, 4/16 March 1854, signed by Alexander Armfelt.

45. CAA/STYA, 20 September 1860.

46. Miller, The Romanov Empire, 212.

47. CAA/STYA, May 26/June 7, 1851, Memorial, signed by Alexander Armfelt. Pettersson, “Donated Collections in the Sinebrychoff Art Museum,” 91.

48. CAA/STYA, May 26/June 7, 1851, Memorial, signed by Alexander Armfelt.

49. Lindström, Ateneumin Taidemuseo, 5.

50. Pettersson, Suomen Taideyhdistyksestä Ateneumiin, 108–9.

51. CAA/STYA, May 26/June 7, 1851, Memorial, signed by Alexander Armfelt.

52. Neverov, Great Private Collections, 39, 69.

53. Alexander II’s reign left an indelible mark on Finnish society, but its full significance cannot be adequately dealt with here.

54. Pettersson, Suomen Taideyhdistyksestä Ateneumiin, 109.

55. Jukka Relas, Keisarillinen Taidekokoelma Suomessa (Keuruu, Finland: Otava, 2009).

56. Jukka Relas, Valta, Tyyli ja Tila. Keisarien ja Presidenttien Residenssi Helsingissä 1837–1940 (Helsinki: Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen aikakauskirja, 2013), 87.

57. Neverov, Great Private Collections, 105–7, 106.

58. Sirkka Havu and Irina Lebedeva, Collections Donated by the Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg to the Alexander University of Finland in 1829: An Annotated Catalogue, ed. Sirkka Havu and Irina Lebedeva (Helsinki: Helsinki University Library and Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1997).

59. Jukka Ervamaa, “Von Wrightin veljesten taide. Historia, maisema, nykypäivä,” in Taiteilijaveljekset von Wright, ed. Ilkka Karttunen (Helsinki: Retretti, 2000), 10–17.

60. Anto Leikola, “Magnus von Wright, kansallisen taiteemme uranuurtaja,” in Taiteilijaveljekset von Wright. Suomen Kauneimmat Lintumaalaukset, ed. Anto Leikola, Juhani Lokki, and Torsten Stjernberg (Helsinki: Otava, 1993), 21–40. Magnus von Wright is called “the father of Finnish ornithology”; Juhani Lokki, Torsten Stjernberg, and Anto Leikola, “Veljekset von Wright Luonnontutkijoina,” in Taiteilijaveljekset von Wright, ed. Ilkka Karttunen (Helsinki: Retretti, 2000), 43–51.

61. Jukka Relas, Keisarillinen Taidekokoelma Suomessa, 30, 32.

62. Adlerberg and Armfelt were part of the ‘regime personnel’ of Alexander II; Jussila, Suomen Suuriruhtinaskunta, 279.

63. Alexander Armfelt’s early career is discussed, among others, by Hans Hirn, Alexander Armfelt: Början av en Statsmannabana (Helsinki: SLS, 1948).

64. The Finnish newspaper Finlands Allmänna Tidning, 31 May 1842.

65. Magnus von Wright, Dagbok 1841–1849, ed. Anto Leikola, Juhani Lokki, Torsten Stjernberg, and Johan Ulfvens (Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1999), 74.

66. The Finnish newspaper Suometar, 9 June 1851.

67. Magnus von Wright, Dagbok 1850-1862, ed. Anto Leikola, Juhani Lokki, Torsten Stjernberg, and Johan Ulfvens (Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2001), 73.

68. The Finnish newspaper Suometar 24 March 1854.

69. Von Wright, Dagbok 1850–1862, 143, 144.

70. CAA/STYA, Helsinki, 4–16 March 1854, signed by Alexander Armfelt.

71. Von Wright, Dagbok 1850–1862, 144.

72. Von Wright, Dagbok 1850–1862, 12.

73. Among the various residences of the Stroganovs, Magnus most likely visited the painting gallery of the Stroganov Palace, built by Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli at the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and the Moika embankment; see Neverov, Great Private Collections, 28, and Sergei Kuznetsov, “A Family Chronicle,” in Stroganoff: The Palace and Collections of a Russian Noble Family, ed. Penelope Hunter-Stiebel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 21–43.

74. Saverkina, History of Private Collecting in Russia, 12–23.

75. Von Wright, Dagbok 1850–1862, 13.

76. On Rumyantsev Museum, see http://www.rmuseum.ru/data/authors/p/pryanishnikovfi.php

77. One of the most renowned Russian artists, marine painter Aivazovsky spent most of his life in Crimea where he ran an art school in his studio in Feodosia; see Nikolai Novouspenski, Aivazovski 1800–1917 (Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1989).

78. Neverov, Great Private Collections, 89.

79. Yussupov’s family was connected through Count Felix Yussupov to the monk Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.

80. Neverov, Great Private Collections, 93.

81. Von Wright, Dagbok 1850–1862, 15.

82. The source reads “Imperial Heraldry”; Von Wright, Dagbok 1850–1862, 13.

83. Von Wright, Dagbok 1841–1849, 388, Von Wright, Dagbok 1850-1862, 35.

84. Magnus von Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, ed. Anto Leikola, Juhani Lokki, Torsten Stjernberg, and Johan Ulfvens (Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1997), 435.

85. Janken Myrdal, “Source Pluralism as a Method of Historical Research,” in Historical Knowledge: In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence, ed. Susanna Fellman and Marjatta Rahikainen (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 155–89.

86. Ginzburg, “Mikrohistoriasta,” 193. The concept of microhistory was first used by Edoardo Grendi but now has new variants including Matti Peltonen’s “typical anomaly”, and “normal anomaly”; see Matti Peltonen, “Carlo Ginzburg ja mikrohistorian ajatus,” in Johtolankoja. Kirjoituksia Mikrohistoriasta ja Historiallisesta Metodista, trans. Aulikki Vuola (Tampere, Finland: Gaudeamus, 1996), 21.

87. Vivana Gravano, “Museo Diffuso: Performing Memory in Public Spaces,” in Chambers et al, Postcolonial Museum, 111–24.

88. Damnatio memoriae refers to the ancient Roman custom of inflicting everlasting oblivion on unwanted individuals or traitors; see Vivana Gravano, “Museo Diffuso: Performing Memory in Public Spaces,” 112.

89. Miller, The Romanov Empire, 68.

90. In “Re-staging Histories and Identities,” in Macdonald, Companion to Museum Studies, 186–87, Rosmarie Beier-de Haan of the Deutsches Historisches Museum poses the central questions: Whose memories are privileged, and whose fall into oblivion? What gives me authority to speak for others? Who do I include, and who do I exclude? How can I generalise without ignoring? How can I mediate between individual memory and the general interpretation of histories?

91. Macdonald, “Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities,” 1–16.