page_title: Odessa Art Museum
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Odessa Art Museum / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Odessa art museum inside
context_page_description: Odesa Fine Arts Museum is one of the principal art galleries of the city of Odesa. Founded in 1899, it occupies the Potocki Palace, itself a monument of early 19th century architecture. The museum now houses more than 10 thousand pieces of art, including paintings by some of the best-known Russian and Ukrainian artists of late 19th and early 20th century. It is the only museum in Odessa that has free entrance day every last Sunday of the month.
context_section_description: The palace that now houses the gallery is one of the oldest palaces of Odessa. It was ordered by Seweryn Potocki, a former Polish member of parliament who after the partitions of Poland swore loyalty to the tsar of Russia and eventually became a noted Russian diplomat and an ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. Potocki was also a wealthy landowner and one of his properties, the village of Severinovka named after him contained a quarry of light limestone, from which both the palace and most of Odessa's public buildings were built.
  The construction started in 1805 and was supervised by Francesco Boffo, a noted Italian architect and the author of many palaces and public buildings in Odessa and the Crimea. Construction of the main building was ready by 1810, though due to Napoleonic Wars works on internal furnishing did not commence until 1824 and were finished by 1828.
  The neoclassical building is a typical magnate residence of the epoch, with two floors, a large portico with a tympanum supported by six classical columns. The main building is joined to the side wings by semi-circular galleries, forming a Cour d'honneur in front of the palace. Behind it a small English-style landscape garden was created, with a romantic grotto. The interior design is mostly an eclectic mixture of various styles popular in early 19th century.
  Seweryn Potocki, who died in 1829, did not see the palace completed. Instead, it was inherited by his distant relative, Olga Potocka, daughter to Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki. Potocka married Lev Naryshkin; although the palace remained her personal property, it is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Naryshkin Palace. In 1888 the building was sold to the mayor of Odessa, Grigorios Maraslis who then sold it in 1892 to the Odessa Society of Fine Arts. It took 9 more years to complete the first collection. Finally, Odessa Fine Arts Museum was opened on 6 November 1899. The core of the initial collection was formed by paintings donated to the museum by the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1920s, the museum was renamed Peoples Art Museum. After World War II, it was reopened as Odessa Picture Gallery. It obtained its present name in 1966.
caption: Odessa Art Museum inside
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