The Walpole purchase confirmed Catherine’s reputation as Europe’s foremost collector of art and as the leading prospective customer for all owners with major collections to sell. She continued buying, although more selectively. In 1779, when Grimm recommended purchasing the collection of the French Comte de Baudouin, which contained nine Rembrandts, two Rubenses, and four Van Dycks, she held back, complaining about the price. Grimm reported, “The Comte de Baudouin leaves it to your Majesty to decide conditions, timing, and all other considerations.” Catherine admitted, “It would indeed be discourteous to refuse such a generous offer,” but she did not concede until 1784. “The world is a strange place and the number of happy people very small,” she wrote to Grimm. “I can see that the Comte de Baudouin is not going to be happy until he sells his collection and it appears that I am the one destined to make him happy.” She sent Grimm fifty thousand rubles. When the paintings arrived and were uncrated, Catherine wrote to Grimm, “We are prodigiously delighted.”
Many wealthy Europeans wished to be considered connoisseurs, and competition in the art market was keen. Catherine was the leader; she was an immensely rich collector who trusted her agents and possessed the self-confidence of one who wants only the best and is willing to pay for it. Later, she confessed that ego and prestige played a part; that she loved to possess, to amass. “It is not love of art,” she admitted, in part facetiously. “It is voracity. I am a glutton.” Her agents continued to buy everything available of beauty and value. During her reign, Catherine’s collection expanded to almost four thousand paintings. She became the greatest collector and patron of art in the history of Europe.
Catherine was more than a collector; she was also a builder. It was through architecture as well as her collection of paintings that she was determined to leave on St. Petersburg a cultural mark that time would not obliterate. During her reign, architects of genius were commissioned to create elegant public buildings, palaces, mansions, and other structures, all examples and reminders of the larger world she wished Russia to join. Elizabeth had also been a builder, but now Elizabethan baroque exuberance, as manifested by Rastrelli, was succeeded by a sober, pure, neoclassical style. Catherine’s buildings were intended to represent in form and stone her personal character and taste. She preferred to combine simplicity with elegance, employing stately columns and geometrical façades built of granite and marble rather than Rastrelli’s brick and painted plaster.
The huge, baroque Winter Palace, Rastrelli’s signature masterpiece, had taken eight years to build and was completed in 1761, the year Elizabeth died. Painted apple-green and white, with a façade that rose 450 feet, it was a massive structure of 1,050 rooms and 117 staircases. Six months later, when Catherine reached the throne, she found this palace crushing in size and herself stifled by its lush decor. With her love of rationality and order, she rejected the ornate atmosphere of gold, blue, and glitter and looked for an escape. She disliked pomp and crowds, as well as architectural frills; she preferred informal gatherings in small rooms where she could enjoy the intimate companionship of a few close friends. She also wanted a spacious, well-lighted hall nearby to serve as a gallery in which to hang the paintings now arriving on the quay below. To create such a refuge, she turned to a French architect brought to Russia by Ivan Shuvalov, Elizabeth’s favorite during the final years of her reign. Shuvalov had persuaded the empress to permit the founding of a permanent Academy of Art and subsequently had persuaded the French architect Michel Vallin de la Mothe to come to St. Petersburg and build a gallery to house this academy. Catherine, then a grand duchess, had admired Mothe’s new building when it was finished in 1759, and, once on the throne, she commissioned the architect to build something for her.
In 1765, Mothe designed for Catherine a private retreat and art gallery in which to hang her new paintings. She called it her Hermitage, and subsequently it became known as the Little Hermitage. Mothe attached the three-story building as an annex to Rastrelli’s enormous Winter Palace, and, somehow, perhaps because of its far smaller size, its neoclassical façade was compatible with the huge, ornate Winter Palace next door. Throughout her reign, she used the smaller building as a European town house in which to read, work, and talk. It was here that she met Diderot on his visit to St. Petersburg, Grimm on his two visits, the British ambassador James Harrris, and many others. She could also stroll through its gallery, by herself or surrounded by friends, and reflect on her latest treasures.
