THE HERMITAGE TREASURES: II

HOW great is Soviet Russia's storehouse of modern art, still largely hidden away in the storerooms of Leningrad's Hermitage Museum? Answer last week from a man with firsthand knowledge: "The Hermitage has the greatest collection of Picassos before 1914, and the greatest collection of Matisses anywhere. Its Gauguin collection is by far the greatest in the world. In Cezannes, it is second among institutional collections only to the Barnes collection in Merion, Pa. And it has three first-rate Rousseaus. The Van Goghs are excellent. From the period of say 1885 to 1914, its pictures are magnificent. In the later period of art in France, it is unsurpassed."

This considered opinion came from no Soviet pressagent, but from Alfred Barr Jr., director of collections of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, who took advantage of last spring's cultural thaw to go to Leningrad for the Hermitage's first big display of French painting. Beyond the show, Barr was permitted to see an astonishing cache of modern art stored away out of sight.

Picasso for $40. The Communist collection of modern masterworks, all bought before World War I, is the result of simon-pure capitalist acquisitiveness. At the turn of the century, fabulously rich Russian merchants, financiers and landowners took the train for Paris, returned with packing cases loaded not only with impressionist masters but a cross section of the most revolutionary modern art of their day.

Greatest of all the Russian capitalist collectors was Moscow Tea Merchant Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin, a neat little man with a big head and striking features, who had an uncanny eye for art. One of his earliest modern art enthusiasms was for Henri Matisse, whom he first met in 1906 when Matisse was 37. By 1914 Shchukin had loaded up with 36 Matisse paintings. Collector Shchukin's second stroke of luck happened when Matisse passed him along to Picasso, and the Russian merchant became one of the young Spanish painter's first important patrons. Shchukin had the good sense not to haggle over prices; after all, he was picking up Picasso "blue period" works for as little as $40*.

Collector's Ghost. "Whenever I had some particularly fine pictures for sale," recalls Paris Art Dealer Henry Kahnweiler, "I would send Shchukin a telegram. He generally arrived in Paris within a fortnight." Shchukin's rococo 18th century palace in Moscow was packed with art, including eight Cezannes, three Renoirs, 16 top Derains, 50 Picassos, Degas' Dancers in Blue, Matisse's Music, Gauguin's What! You are jealous? and Rousseau's Tropical Forest (see color pages).

The Soviets in 1918 wasted little time expropriating the treasures of Shchukin and other wealthy collectors, pooled them to form Moscow's famed Museum of Modern Western Art. Used as tourist bait for years, the museum was closed during World War II by Stalin, who liked his artists regimented and realist. Only in the post-Stalin years have the paintings begun to reappear in Leningrad's Hermitage and Moscow's Pushkin Museums.

Treating audiences abroad more freely, Soviet commissars of art shipped out for loan exhibitions paintings still considered explosive at home until, in 1954, the ghost of Shchukin rose to haunt them. During a huge Picasso retrospective in Paris, Shchukin's daughter, Irene, demanded back 37 Picassos formerly in her father's collection. In a panic, the Russian embassy dispatched a small black truck to the exhibit, whisked the Picassos off the wall and to safety inside their embassy. Said Comrade Picasso: "After all, what would happen if the Count of Paris claimed the chateau of Versailles?"

The Soviets have been gradually rehabilitating the impressionists, despite the Communist dictum that men like Renoir "reflect modern bourgeois realities.'' Last spring, in its show of French moderns, the Hermitage moved further, hung 20 Matisses, 17 Gauguins, 19 Cezannes, 21 Monets and 24 pre-Cubist Picassos. But it will probably be years before the full glory of Soviet modern-art acquisitions is considered safe enough to be seen. Modern art is still suspect. Says cautious Hermitage Director Mikhail Artamonov: "Modern Western art is not uniform. Some new paintings are quite unacceptable for us, though doubtlessly there are some outstanding achievements of modern art."

*Another great Russian capitalist collector was Ivan Abramovich Morosov, who competed fiercely with Shchukin for the paintings of Matisse and Picasso, fell behind because he could not accept cubism.

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