Guided Tour of the Exhibition “Our House Resembled a Museum…” Netherlandish Painting of the 17th–19th Centuries

From August 27 to December 21, 2026, the Nikolayevsky Hall of Yusupov Palace on the Moika River will host 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 cannot be found in other Russian museums. Visitors to Yusupov Palace will have a unique opportunity 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: it was here, in the palace on the Moika River, that original paintings by Netherlandish artists were housed during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Some of the works included in the exhibition have returned to the galleries of the palace on the Moika River for the first time since the beginning of the 20th century. Among them are “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), and other paintings.

“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 to house the family's art collection. The exhibition will recreate the historical atmosphere of these galleries, with particular attention paid to the history of the collection and its founder, Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov.