Art Museum is one of the oldest and richest museums of the city. The museum was founded in 1870 by a prominent public figure V.P. Soukachev. Thanks to Soukachev’s private collection the citizens of Irkutsk could see the original canvasses of Russian and European artists of XIX century: Repin, Shishkin, Aivazovskiy, Rafael, Rubens. At present the museum keeps 14 thousand art works. There is a rich collection of ancient Russian and Siberian icons, cult wooden sculpture of XVIII century. The portrait gallery of the Russian collection of the museum contains the paintings of V.D. Polenov, V.A. Tropinin, I.E. Repin, V.M. Vasnetsov, and others. The West European painting collection has canvasses of XVII-XIX centuries masters from Holland, Flanders, France, Italy, and England. The collection of Japanese and Chinese artworks includes all kinds of art: painting, porcelain, wooden, metal, stone works from III to XX century.
