Dr Natalia Murray
Seminars on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 February and an optional visit to Paris on 8 February
£145 online only or £290 with Paris Tour
PLEASE NOTE: BOOKING IS NOW CLOSED.
Course description
Launched in Paris in 1909, Diaghilev’s Saisons Russes marked a turning point for Russian art in France and proved to be a major influence on contemporary ballet dancing and theatre design. Modern French art was undoubtedly a touchstone throughout the period, but it was the variety of ways in which so many Russian artists fused French innovations with the extraordinary wealth of their own cultural heritage, which resulted in the flowering of the Russian avant-garde and its influence on the course of modern art.
In the course of this study tour, we shall immerse ourselves in the Paris of the turn of the twentieth century, when Russian artists, along with many other artistic immigrants, settled into the bohemian district of Montparnasse. Following in the footsteps of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, who were both early Russian collectors of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, we shall ‘walk’ along Rue Lafitte to pay visits to the famous art-dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard. We shall then imagine spending an evening with the brilliant Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes at the Paris Opera at Palais Garnier, where we can also admire Chagall’s beautiful ceiling frescoes.
In addition to online lectures and discussions, the course includes an optional visit to Paris on 8 February. We shall start the day with the visit to the famous Parisian artists’ ‘hive’ La Ruche, where Chagall and most famous French avant-garde artists worked side-by-side. After a convivial lunch in the Café de la Rotonde, frequented by Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, who often paid for meals with their drawings, we shall have a guided tour to the exhibition The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, in the company of Sergei Shchukin’s grandson.
N.B. The Paris visit will run with a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 12 students, on a first-come first-served basis.
Lecturer’s biography
Dr Natalia Murray gained a BA and MA in art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, and a PhD at The Courtauld. She is a writer, teacher and curator specialising in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Russian and Western European art and is the curator of the Royal Academy’s major exhibition Revolution. Russian Art 1917-1932 (2017). Natalia is currently working on several new exhibition projects in Moscow and Paris, while also teaching the MA course Collecting and Curating the Modern. European Art. 1863-1930 at The Courtauld. She has published widely in her field; her most recent book, Two Women Patrons of the Russian Avant-Garde. Nadezhda Dobychina and Klavdia Mikhailova was published in 2021 by Unicorn Publishers.