"Subjected to return": an attempt to reconstruct the relocation history of the «Portrait of three personages» by N.S. Goncharova from the collection of the Totma museum association

Abstract

The "Portrait of three personages" by N.S. Goncharova entered the collection of the Totma Museum Association in 1927 when it arrived from the Central Depository of the State museum fund. From the Museum’s accession book we know, that formerly the painting was held in The Moscow Museum of Artistic Culture. In this article we attempt to reconstruct the provenance of the painting in question. For this purpose we’ve studied a wide range of diverse and sometimes contradictory documents and memories, illustrating the history of the relocations of the artist’s works, the work of the Museum and the Purchasing Commissions of the Visual Art Department of the People's Commissariat of Education, and the work of the staff of the Moscow Museum of Artistic Culture. At the end of the article we briefly describe the results of the restoration of the painting, conducted at the Grabar Art Conservation Center, and also mention the preliminary results of the research, aimed to reconfirm the attributions and the dates of creation of both compositions of this two-sided exhibit.