October 2018 will mark the 175th anniversary of the birth of Henryk Siemiradzki (1843–1902), graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and one of the most prominent masters of the late 19th century European academic painting. His career in art was closely interwoven with Rome, the city whose image, history, and unique artistic ambiance never failed to attract artists from many countries of the world.

The exhibition will unite, for the first time, 125 artworks by Siemiradzki and his contemporaries, Russian academic painters and sculptors, who worked in the Eternal City in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. Among them are Mark Antokolsky, Stepan Bakalovich, Vladimir Beklemishev, Mikhail Botkin, Fyodor Bronnikov, Nikolai Laveretsky, Alexander Rizzoni, Alexander and Pavel Svedomsky, Vassily Smirnov, and Pavel Chistyakov. The visitors will see outstanding examples of landscape, genre, portrait, and historical painting which have become classics in the history of Russian art.

The core of the exhibition, dedicated to the work of Henryk Siemiradzki, will include not only artist’s famous canvases from the collections of the Russian Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery but also less widely known works from regional and private collections.