German troops enter Sevastopol, 1942
The Gavalov Mansion (here as restored by the efforts of Mikhail Kroshitsky) is undergoing further modernizations as of 2022.
Mikhael Kroshitsky Sevastopol Art Museum
The M. Kroshitsky Sevastopol Art Museum is an art museum located in the Crimean city of Sevastopol.
9 Nakhimova Prospect, Sevastopol
The museum is located in the center of the city, in a remarkable four story mansion with a magnificently decorated facade, built in the late 19th century by the "personal honorary citizen of Sevastopol" merchant Semyon Gavalov. After the formation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921, the museum was opened November, 1927, for, in good Soviet spirit, "the broadest masses of the people.”
It was renamed in 1991 in honor of Mikhail Kroshitsky, museum director from 1939 to 1958, and houses an important collection of pre and post revolutionary European art.
The Collection
Museum History
Foundation
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The Sevastopol Art Museum was founded during Crimea's brief period of autonomous rule (1921-1945) following the Russian Revolution (1917) and civil war. The original collection comprised largely of artworks seized from the summer residence of Tsar Nicholas II in the Livadia Palace, as well as from the aristocratic estates that lined the southern shores of Crimea. These works were later supplemented from the collections of the State Museum Fund and museums in Moscow and Leningrad.
The War Years: WWII
The Crimea was an arena of intense conflict during World War II. Many museum collections (and other cultural treasures) were destroyed during the chaos of the hostilities, including that of the Simferopol Art Museum in Crimea's capital city, where almost the entire collection went up in flames.
Following the Siege of Sevastopol and an intense period of bombardment, Nazi Germans successfully overran the city, leaving only 11 buildings undamaged. The beautiful Gavalov mansion did not survive unscathed, but its collection, in an act of quixotic wartime heroism, was saved, owing to the efforts of its then director, Mikhael Kroshitsky.
The Gavalov Mansion (here as restored by the efforts of Mikhail Kroshitsky) is undergoing further modernizations as of 2022.
Under Kroshitsky's directions, over one thousand artworks were evacuated, first, under German fire (and personally accompanied by Kroshitsky himself), by ship through to the Azov Sea, and then on overland through the Causasus Mountains (and Georgia!) to safekeeping in Tomsk, in Siberia—an almost 3000 mile journey. Following the war, perhaps even more impressively, Kroshitsky oversaw the return of the collection to Sevastopol, worked tirelessly to rebuild both the museuum and the Gavalov mansion, which was reopened in the spring 1958.
Because of its strategic location, Sevastopol was designated a closed city following WWII, requiring non-residents to apply for permits in order to visit. This had a strong impact on the culture of the city even within Crimea, suppressing opportunity for growth and development—while simultaneously amplifying the importance of the Art Museum's survival.
Collapse of the USSR
Following Ukraine's emergence as an independent state, Kroshitsky's efforts were recognized with the Museum's re-dedication in his name.
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"In the autumn of 1991, on November 27, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted a resolution agreeing:
<<To accept the proposal of the Sevastopol City Executive Committee to name Sevastopol Art Museum, MP Kroshitsky Sevastopol Art Museum, for the Honored Artist of the USSR Kroshitsky, MP.>>"
This re-dedication was the result of decades of appeals by the Sevastopol public. At the museum, the victory was celebrated with a gala evening, together with a special exhibition of works, documents and heirlooms from the Kroshitsky family.For the next 23 years, the museum experienced advances in its collections and in its ability to interact and exchange work with other museums internationally. In 2012, the museum for the first time joined the European Night of Museums.
The Collection Today
Western European Art
The Sevastopol collection comprises more than ten thousand works of art, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, graphic and printed media works.
The permanent collection displays original masterpieces from the Renaissance and the Dutch Golden Age as well as paintings by French and German masters and Russian artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries. The art is organized into three collections: Western European Art; Art of the Russian Empire of the 18th—early 20th centuries; and Soviet, or more specifically Crimean, Art of the 20th century. The museum offers new and rotating exhibitions on a monthly basis. As of 2022, the Gavalov Mansion is under renovation and interior modernization, and the collection is housed on a temporary basis in space at 70 General Ostryakov Avenue.
These pieces represents the earliest part of the museum collection, including art from the estates of Prince LS Golitsyn, Prince Baryatinsky, Prince A.N. Witmer, and P.A. Demidov (the last owner of Vishnevetsky Castle). It includes Dutch and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century, works of the Italian Renaissance, French artists of the XVII-XIX centuries, Meissen porcelain and Western European bronzes.
The provenance of at least one of the pictures below was Nicholas II's collection at the Lividia Summer Palace, and formerly hung at the the Hermitage in Russia. Any guesses?
In 2012, Dorothy's work made an appearance on PBS's Antiques Roadshow. A woman brought in three absolutely beautiful paintings (from a set of nine!), scenes from the plays of Shakespeare. The thing that strikes me most about these paintings—the high quality of the work. What else lies out there, waiting for discovery? The gleanings of what one can find now, on the Internet—it's highly random, unorganized.
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What will Dorothy's status as an artist be, when one day, finally, someone has gathered her best work together, and we finally can take in the scope of her vision, the work of her hands?
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At the very least, this: elevated.
​1. Burkhauser, Jude (ed). "Glasgow Girls," in Women in Art and Design 1880-1920. Canongate.
2. Gray, Sara (ed). British Women Artists: a Biographical Dictionary of 1,000 Women Artists in the British Arts, Applied Arts, & Decorative Arts. Dark River (2019).
3. Cumming, Elizabeth, Hand, Heart and Soul: the Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland. (2007) Edinburgh: Birlinn, p. 60.
4. "Smyth, Dorothy Carleton (1880-1933)," Glasgow School of Art: Archives & Collections. web.
5. Fell, H. Granville. "Vellucent Book-Bindings: A new method of decoration for bound books–the 'Vellucent' process" in The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine & Applied Art. (1903), pp. 169–176. web.
6. "Dorothy Carleton Smyth - 'a living force contained in a human body'" GSA: Archives & Collections (19 Aug 2015). web.
7. "Smyth, Dorothy Carleton," in Benezit Dictionary of Artists. (2011) Oxford University Press. web.
8. Smyth, Dorothy Carleton, Tabbard, Victoria and Albert Museum Collection. web.
9. Woman's Leader. National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (1912), p. 196. web
10. Strang, Alice. Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965. (2015)
11. Elizabeth Ewan; Sue Innes; Sian Reynolds. The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004. Edinburgh University Press (2006), pp. 136–7
12. The Glasgow Herald (16 February 1933). "Glasgow Art Teacher - Death of Miss D. Carleton Smyth". Glasgow’s Cultural History. p. 6. web.
References
References are not linked, but are available via Internet search where indicated.
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