A Taste for Splendor: Russian Imperial and European Treasures from the Hillwood Museum

Virginia: Art Services International, 1998. Used. Paperback
340 pp., illustrated

The Hillwood Museum in Washington houses the Russian Imperial and European art collected by Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post, an accomplished businesswoman and passionate connoisseur. The collection is unique in the United States and probably in the world outside Russia and was started when Post accompanied her husband, Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, to Russia in 1937-38. Excellent photographs convey the beauty of the house and the splendor with which it was decorated. The collection contains pieces in every artistic medium?porcelain, landscape paintings, portraits, furniture, gold and silver objects, crystal, enamel boxes, and more?and each piece is a work of the highest quality and so arranged that one understands the full range of Russian Imperial achievement in the visual arts. This volume should be included in every library where works on Russian art and culture are collected.