Poltava Art Museum

Its founder Mikhail Rudynsky, who later became a famous Ukrainian archaeologist and museologist, called it “The Museum of Arts”.

The artistic objects from the nationalised estates of the Kochubeys (in Dykanka), the Galagans (in Sokyrnytsi), the Kapnists (in Obukhivka), the Repnins (in Yahotyn) were now in public ownership.

On March 7, 1939, the Council of People's Commissars decreed its independent status as a regional art museum.

Nowadays, it is only due to the museum guide by Rudynsky that we can imagine how great the losses were: a rich collection of Western European paintings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Peter Paul Rubens, Melchior d'Hondecoeter, Adriaen van Ostade, Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun and others, works by Ukrainian painters of the 17th-18th centuries, the best pieces by Russian artists of the 19th-20th centuries, to name but a few.

The City Council resolved to move the museum to the building of the Art Gallery in Frunze Street.

Unique are the works by Lucas Cranach the Younger, Van Ravesteyn, Clara Peeters, Melchior d’Hondecoeter, Marcello Bacciarelli, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Francesco Guardi and others.