National Museum of Art of Azerbaijan, Baku, Azerbaijan

National Museum of Art of Azerbaijan, Baku, Azerbaijan  

Azerbaijan National Museum of Art is the biggest art museum of Azerbaijan. It was founded in 1936 in Baku and in 1943 was named after Rustam Mustafayev, a prominent Azeri scenic designer and theater artist. The museum consists of two buildings standing next to each other. There are over 3,000 items in 60 rooms on display in total.

Seven of the rooms in the first building feature European art, and ten Russian art. European art includes works of Italian (Guercino, Leandro Bassano, Francesco Solimena, Lorenzo Bartolini), Francophone (Jules Dupre’, Gaspard Dughet, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Benjamin Constant), Dutch/Flemish (Frans Hals, Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, Adriaen Brouwer, Adriaen van Ostade, Justus Sustermans, Pieter Claesz), German (Johann Heinrich Roos, Fritz August Kaulbach) and Polish (Jan Styka) painters.

The second edifice built in 1885 houses the Eastern art, represented particularly by Persian, Turkish, Chinese and Japanese art. Russian art is encompassed notably by paintings of Karl Briullov, Alexey Venetsianov, Vasily Vereshchagin, Isaac Levitan, Vladimir Makovsky, Valentin Serov, Vladimir Borovikovsky, Vasily Tropinin, Konstantin Korovin and Ivan Shishkin. There are also restored samples of Russian avant-garde.

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