63. My 22 favorite paintings at the Hermitage General Staff Building

July 22, 2017

63. My 22 favorite paintings at the Hermitage General Staff Building

As a member of the Hermitage Friends' Club, I can spend time at any of the Hermitage museums without paying admission, for a year. So at least one or two days a month I've been visiting one of the six branches - three times already to the Winter Palace, and now twice to the General Staff Building.

As I mentioned in my original post on this branch, the collections here are targeted to a specific period (19th and 20th centuries) and place of origin (Western Europe), so these paintings (one is actually a pastel drawing, but that's close enough) don't necessarily represent my favorite kind of art overall. I definitely appreciate these genres, though, so can find plenty to enjoy here.

I don't want to turn this into an essay on art history, so I present the images here without background information or context (other than the artist's name, painting title, and year). Indeed, much the same way they're displayed in the museum. The angle on some of the pictures isn't great. I tried to find the best position to eliminate all the glare from the light fixtures and windows, as well as to avoid other visitors, and that resulted in some less-than-ideal angles.

Although a ranked list includes mostly arbitrary judgments, I decided to go for it based on a gut feeling of what speaks to me, for one reason or another. So without further ado, here are my 22 favorite paintings at the General Staff Building, in reverse order:

#22
Alexander von Wagner & Alexander von Liezen-Mayer
The Return from the Hunt (1864)