There is only a small body of Russian Impressionism, mainly because of the Russian Revolution gave culture a more monolithic spin. In the All-Union Congress of Sovjet Writers in 1934, Maxim Gorky centred all contemporary literature around Socialist Realism, and this put Russian Impressionist painting into a dead end - until the 1950s. A collection of Russian Impressionist works is exhibited in the Museum opened in 2016 in the former sugar and flour warehouse of the Bolshevik chocolate factory at the Leningradsky Prospect in Moscow (the Museum of Russian Impressionism). It is a small but excellent museum showing paintings of Konstantin Korovin, Igor Grabar, Konstantin Yuon, Petr Konchalovsky, Yuri Pimenov and some selected pictures by Boris Kustodiev and Valentin Serov. My personal favourite though is none of the above, but Tit Dvornikov's "By the Sea" (1912) showing a scene of a gathering of women around a table at Odessa. But I liked the entire exhibition a lot, which is located on the upper two floors of the round building. The basement showed an exhibition on Spanish Impressionism, and I found it interesting to see the differences literally side by side. The former chocolate factory is entirely refurbished and rebuilt into a cultural centre and high-end office space, which appears a good mix, also on the commercial side of the project. I just arrived in Moscow, and I really like the city. It is my favourite European capital. Not that cold yet, in December, but around - 8 to -2 °C, but it feels like in the next few days temperatures will drop, and so the weather forecast said.

“By the Sea” (1912) by Tit Dvornikov (with kind permission of the Museum of Russian Impressionism)