Sharing The Wealth.(Arts)(From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870- 1925 From Moscow and St. Petersnburg)

Byline: Sophie Grove

Despite a heated diplomatic row, a collection of paintings from Russia goes on display in London.

The figures in Matisse's "The Dance" are oblivious to the furor that surrounded their arrival in London, frolicking around the canvas with joyous abandon. But Matisse's masterpiece--and the rest of the 120 works the Russian government planned to loan the Royal Academy-- almost never made it. Frosty relations between Whitehall and the Kremlin over the 2006 polonium poisoning of former spy Alexander Litvinenko in London-- and Russia's refusal to extradite the chief suspect--cast a diplomatic cloud over the show. Just weeks before it was due to open, the Russian state culture agency canceled the exhibition, citing British laws that might leave the works vulnerable to seizure by relatives of their tsarist-era art collectors. Only hurried legal action that safeguarded foreign-owned assets from seizure and intervention by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband paved the way for the exhibit's journey. Now it's on display at the venerable Royal Academy, which sits just a stone's throw from the sushi bar where Litvinenko was poisoned.

It would have been a shame if London had missed out. "From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870- 1925 From Moscow and St. Petersburg" (through April 18) illustrates the artistic influence of Paris--then the epicenter of the art world--on Russia and beyond. Indeed, the blueprint for Vladimir Tatlin's geometric "Monument to the Third International" bears a striking resemblance to the matrix of structured iron used in the Eiffel Tower. Some pairings are subtler; could Chagall have come up with his surreal "Promenade"--in which his lover, Bella Rosenfeld, floats like a tethered balloon from his hand--without being exposed to French symbolism during his time in Paris? The show demonstrates how some members of the Russian school eventually surpassed their European mentors. "One piece by ...