Dome

East entry court, view of the north wall facing the court, showing decorative brick work; Founded by the Moscow textile magnate Pavel Tretyakov (1832-1898), the present gallery, designed in a Neo-Slavic style by Viktor Vasnetsov in 1902, grew from a collection started in 1856, opened to the public in 1874, and presented to the city of Moscow in 1892, together with the Western art collection of Tretyakov's brother Sergei--in total exceeding 1,800 items. Pavel Tretyakov initially collected western European and 17th-century Dutch art but switched his allegiance to indigenous art in the 1860s to establish the basis of the largest collection of Russian art. Though associated chiefly with the 19th-century realist school, the Peredvizhniki, whose chief patron he became, Tretyakov was a diverse collector with tastes ranging from early icons to the early modernist works of artists like Isaak Levitan, Valentin Serov, and Mikhail Vrubel. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 6/22/2009)