Saint Petersburg as Franz Liszt Saw It

This exhibition is organized in conjunction with the Liszt Festival at the University of Georgia’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music in October 2024. The event celebrates the legacy of the Hungarian composer and pianist Frantz/Ferenc Liszt (1811 - 1886). This year’s edition of the festival highlights Liszt’s visits to Russia in the 1840s.

Our exhibition features works on paper from the Georgia Museum of Art’s permanent collection showing Russia at the time of the great musician’s visit. Large lithographic prints feature cityscapes of St. Petersburg, while small hand-colored ones picture genre scenes and different occupations: coachmen, porters, water carriers, innkeepers, street peddlers. All these prints were issued by the same publisher, Giuseppe Daziaro (1796 – 1865). Daziaro held shops in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Paris and Warsaw. He also collaborated with the French printer Lemercier à Paris. Within their sweeping vistas, the large cityscapes contain figures and scenes that find close parallels in the small prints.