“Our House Resembled a Museum…” Netherlandish Painting from the Collection of the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Reserve

“Our House Resembled a Museum…”

Netherlandish Painting from the Collection of the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Reserve

On August 27, 2026, Yusupov Palace on the Moika River will open the exhibition “Our House Resembled a Museum…” Netherlandish Painting from the Collection of the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Reserve.

For the first time, the exhibition will present paintings by Netherlandish artists of the 17th–19th centuries, including little-known masters whose works are not represented in other Russian museums. Visitors to Yusupov Palace on the Moika River will be the first to see more than half of the Netherlandish paintings from the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Reserve collection brought together in a single exhibition space. The setting itself makes the exhibition particularly special: some of these paintings were once housed in the palace on the Moika during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The exhibition will reveal the full diversity of the Netherlandish painting collection held by the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Reserve. It includes works representing various genres and reflects the complex history of a collection whose foundations were laid by Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov the Elder. Some paintings were acquired by his descendants, while a small part of the collection was transferred to the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Reserve from other institutions.

Several paintings included in the exhibition have now returned to the very palace where they were displayed during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Among them are works acquired during the lifetime of Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov the Elder:

• “Skirmish” by Philips Wouwerman;
• “In the Stable” by a follower of Abraham van Calraet (1642–1722);
• A copy after a composition by Karel Dujardin (1626–1678);
• “Venus and Mars”, believed to be a work from the workshop of Anthony van Dyck.

The exhibition also includes individual works acquired by B. N. Yusupov, Z. I. Yusupova and N. B. Yusupov the Younger.

“Our house resembled a museum…”

— From the memoirs of Felix Yusupov, written in exile about his home on the Moika River.

A suite of exhibition rooms was created in the palace on the Moika to house the family's art collection. Surviving visual records show that the private gallery was furnished with chairs, armchairs and sofas, as well as objects of decorative and applied art.

The exhibition will recreate the historical atmosphere of the galleries in the palace on the Moika. It will also offer an opportunity to explore the history of the collection through Netherlandish painting and learn about its founder, Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov, whose sculptural portrait adorns the Nikolayevsky Hall.

The exhibition will run until December 21, 2026.