St. Petersburg, Russia: Day Three, Part Two

My friend Kate’s 1990 Soviet Union guidebook tells me that the building across the vast Palace Square was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Today it’s the Impressionist part of the Hermitage, which is where I’m headed.

       That’s where the Shchukin Collection is.  (Or at least where it should be.  Because guess what.  Much of it is on loan abroad.  In... Paris!)

Vuillard, Children in a Room, 1909

       In 1909, Shchukin opened his home on Sundays for public viewings, introducing French avant-garde painting to the Moscovites.  After the 1917 Revolution, the government appropriated his collection (decree of the Council of People's Commissars, signed Lenin, November 8, 1918) while Shchukin escaped to Paris, where he died in 1936. His mansion in Moscow became the State Museum of New Western Art.  In 1948 the State Museum of New Western Art was closed down by a decree signed by Stalin due to its allegedly bourgeois, cosmopolitan and wrongly oriented artworks.  The two collections were randomly divided between the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Monet, Grand Quai Le Havre, 1874

       As it turns out, the museum has done me a service by loaning so many of its Impressionist works, because it’s getting late and I’ve been in various parts of the Hermitage all day, literally.  (It’s now 4:30 pm.)  Besides, I can see the rest of the collection when I get back to Paris.  But I still spend a good hour there.  Then it’s off to an early dinner at the Literary Café - Pushkin just around the corner.

When I get there, the gentleman in the “lobby” asks me if I want to have a drink or something to eat.  As I haven’t had anything since breakfast, the answer is a resounding “something to eat”.  He asks me “Upstairs or downstairs?”
       As I’ve never been here before, I lean in and ask him quietly, “Which is nicer?”
       He smiles and whispers back “Upstairs”.
       So upstairs we go.
       The décor is Belle Epoque, all velvet and quiet with hushed conversations.  There are a surprising number of people here already, but they’re busy having tea.  The waiter gives me a menu and while I’m looking at it he serves me a little mise en bouche in puff pastry with an artfully-dribbled sauce.  For my early dinner, I opt for something light:  a cold plate with two kinds of fish - a white fish and a smoked salmon with a bit of caviar, washed down by a glass of white wine.  Then the waiter comes back and tempts me with their special dessert:   vanilla ice cream with a cream puff on top, all decorated with a sprig of mint, some caramel sauce and a powdering of confectioner’s sugar.  A work of art to make a French restaurant proud.

My stomach at last content, I head back to the hotel just a few short blocks away.  A hot shower, a bit of a read in my “firm” bed and I feel myself slipping off to dream about all the fantastic art I’ve seen all day.  The Hermitage, my reason for coming so far, has not disappointed.