PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Russian art historian Natalya Semenova is author of The Collector: The Story of Sergei Shchukin and His Lost Masterpieces, coauthor of Collecting Matisse, and coeditor of Selling Russia's Treasures. She lives in Moscow. The award-winning Arch Tait has translated more than thirty books by leading Russian authors.
[A] jewel-like focus yet epic scope, reads as sumptuously as a 19th-century novel, and makes stunning use of material still emerging from Soviet archives to illuminate dark corners of history -Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times A century of Russian culture distilled in the story of the life, family and collection of the lavish, lazy, kindly, eccentric grandson of a serf who brought Monet and Matisse to Moscow, waited three years for the right blue Gauguin -and survived the first years of Bolshevik rule. -Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times 'Best Books of 2020: Visual Arts' Semenova was wise to widen the focus, and make this the biography of a family, and also of a collection...The descriptions of their activities read like raw material for Gogol or Dostoevsky. - Martin Gayford, Spectator A narrative skilfully told by the art historian Natalya Semenova -Martin Bentham, Evening Standard Natalya Semenova, who told the story of Shchukin and his collection three years ago, now brings her expertise and narrative verve to the less well-known Morozov. -Lesley Chamberlain, Times Literary Supplement After [Semenova's] exhaustive searches, it is difficult to imagine what further revelations might usurp her volumes on Morozov and Shchukin as the definitive studies of their patronage. -Rosalind P. Blakesley, Literary Review This book is a tribute to the commitment of a patron of the arts and a timely warning about the arbitrary power of the state to destroy and mishandle material. -Alexander Adams, Alexander Adams Art Drawing on a lifetime of research, Natalya Semenova has produced a riveting biography of an intensely private man who became one of the world's greatest collectors of modern art. Her pioneering account of the life and times of Ivan Morozov restores a vital lost page in the cultural history of imperial Russia. Morozov's importance has always been unfairly eclipsed by the better-known and more flamboyant Sergei Shchukin. Natalya Semenova has been able to redress the balance, and her latest biography completes a magnificent diptych chronicling the life and times of Russia's two great collectors. -Rosamund Bartlett
