The Dance

Last day in St Petersburg and included 4 fascinating hours in the State Hermitage Museum.  So many images to choose from and I chose Matisse's The Dance having been the one thing I really wanted to see on this visit.  One review of the painting describes it as ".. expressing man's subconscious sense of involvement in the rhythms of nature and the cosmos ".  Rather like blipping I think.

The painting was commissioned in 1910 by a Russian collector, Sergei Shchukin, a Moscow philanthropist, and confiscated by the State after the 1917 Revolution (Shchukin escaped into exile in Paris).  I was again amazed to see how much stuff in the Hermitage consists of possessions confiscated from private individuals after the revolution.

Two extra blips today.  One of the Palace Square in its late winter glory (not much light for photography outside - as it's been all week) - and the other of the staircase in the Winter Palace of which the Duchess of Sutherland wrote following a ball in 1902 : "The stairs of the palace were guarded by cossacks, with hundreds of footmen in scarlet liveries, I have never in my life seen so brilliant a sight—the light, the uniforms, the enormous rooms, the crowd, the music, making a spectacle that was almost Barbaric."