Information about the author:
Ekaterina E. Dmitrieva
Ekaterina E. Dmitrieva, DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia; Professor, Russian State University for the Humanities, Miusskaya 6, 125993 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9692-8329
E-mail:
This study was carried out at IWL RAS with a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 22-18-00051), https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00051/
Abstract:
The article is devoted to the question of what happened to Western European literary and artistic estates in the period between their heyday and their subsequent museumification. This period, as a rule, remains poorly covered both in research and in the minds of those who visit castles that have turned into museums. Using the example of two artistic communes, the English Redhouse and the German Worpswede, as well as two artistic villas located on the Côte d’Azur of France (Hyeres of Marquise de Noailles and Kerylos оа Theodor Reinach), it is demonstrated that the destruction and adaptation of the art object to the needs of modern times, which were an integral part the history of Russian estates, also marked the history of Western estates. A special form of museumification initiated by the owners of the estates themselves (Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hills, Pierre Loti’s house in Rochefort, Alexandre Dumas’s Monte Cristo Castle) is also considered. The competitive tension that can arise among the owners of castles, who combine in one person at the same time a writer, an architect and the owner of an estate, is demonstrated by the example of the history of the construction of Abbotsford Castle by the Scottish novelist Walter Scott.