How Pictures find their Way to Museums? Case Study: Johann Köler's Portrait of Prince Gorchakov (1867)
Johannes Saar

	A portrait arrived in Estonia at the end of May: of an old man, born here - a Haapsalu boy. It was accompanied by a security escort, substantial sums in insurance and elaborate press releases. Heralds with messages of joy marched before it, disciples rolled in the dust worshipping its footprints. More than a hundred years after his death, Prince Aleksander Mihhailovich Gorchakov returned to his historic homeland. He appeared in the form of a pictorial symbol proffered by its importers as iconic proof of the everlasting grace of the Tsar in the Baltic gubernyas. The Prince studied at the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium together with Puskhin and the December revolutionaries. His career, however, did not end with brandishing his pistol on the Senate Square, but half a century later, as a highly respected statesman whose even-handed diplomatic activities significantly helped Russia to escape foreign policy isolation and restore its influence in Europe and around the Black Sea. The year 1867 marked his professional golden wedding - Russia's foreign minister, as he then was, had faithfully served his tsar for fifty years. An important part of the jubilee celebrations was the commissioning of his official portrait by a Viljandi born artist - the popular portraitist of the Moscow and St. Petersburg high society, Johann Köler. Köler completed the portrait the same year, earning for himself the title of professor. Everybody was happy. This year saw the 175th anniversary of Köler's death, and it was only natural that we should remind ourselves of the work that brought him the title of academician and professor all those years ago. The portrait of the old man had been sitting gathering dust in the archives of the Russian State History Museum for more than a hundred years. Only once, a few years ago, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Haapsalu's celebrated son, had it briefly been brought out to the limelight. By that time in history, Russia had undone all Gorchakov's achievements (his era mirrored by Gorbachov's!): the Baltic countries had gone their separate ways, Ukraine lorded it at the shores of the Black Sea, and the bloody 'misunderstanding' with Chechen independence-fighters had ruined Russia's reputation in Europe. Things are not looking any better today, although the imperial court certainly feels freer to go about its business in the Caucasus since the American-Afghanistan war erupted in the autumn. There is still a need for a Gorchakov. It so happened that at the same time in Revel (Tallinn's name in tsarist times), a local man's oil transit contract with a St. Petersburg supplier was running out. He was thus frantically seeking an elegant opportunity to prove to his Petersburg masters his unending loyalty and support for continuing close economic ties and abolishing the double customs taxation between Estonia and Russia. Interesting rumours reached him through the Baltic section of the Russian Cultural Foundation, of which he was a board member, that a poor local art museum was making feeble attempts to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the death of a Viljandi born notable by bringing into the country the pictorial remains of a distinguished Haapsalu boy who had passed away even earlier. It took some time for it to dawn on the businessman's public relations people that the century-old encounter of these two deceased men had a symbolic value that might actually serve their own interests. Why not make use of art to draw a cultural veil over our business dealings - a nice big picture with medals showing the happy times of the Baltic gubernyas in the folds of the Russian sphere of influence? From there on, things moved fast. At the end of May, Gorchakov's portrait was in Estonia, without the local museum having to worry about finding the hundreds of thousands of kroons required initially to pave the Russian Prince's way in making his grand entrance to the Estonian people. All of a sudden, the prince was here, escorted by a retinue of oil merchants with silk ties. To them it must have seemed like Natasha Rostova's first Court ball - will I or will I not be noticed? But the prince couldn't hang around for long, at the end of the month he was expected back in Moscow for the 225th anniversary of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So, on 22 June he shook the dust of Toompea off his feet and returned to the place, where in his own lifetime he was already being compared to Mendeleyev and Puskhin - to Moscow, my dears, to Moscow. A few months later, the local man was back home again from St. Petersburg, tail between his legs - no contract, no tax exemption. In the imperial capital, the Minister of Economic Affairs had other pressing matters to attend to, and his Secretary, alas, had no authority. A lot of good money had been blown, the moment for making an impression was past. Everybody suddenly started talking about the cooling of the economic climate.
	| Estonian Art 2/01 (10) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2001 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |