The Theodor Pallady Museum (Muzeul Theodor Pallady), a branch of the National Museum of Art, is a museum centered around the works of the famous Romanian painter Theodor Pallady. The museum is located in Melik House, the oldest private building surviving in Bucharest today.
About Theodor Pallady
Theodor Pallady (11 April 1871 – 16 August 1956), born in Iași, went to study engineering in Dresden (Germany) but at the same time also studied art with Erwin Oehme who discovered his talent. Based on his recommendation, Pallady moved to Paris to enroll in the Academy of Fine Arts and work together with various other artists. When his work started to become recognized he opened his own studio in Paris. He spent a great deal of his life traveling between Romania and France and built up a large network of friends among other artists and intellectuals. Pallady became one of the most recognized Romanian painters and many of his works ended up at prestigious international exhibitions. In 1940 he moved to Bucharest and after his death in 1956 he was buried at Bellu Cemetery.
About the Theodor Pallady Museum
The Theodor Pallady Museum is housed in Melik House in the Armenian Quarter of Bucharest and showcases some remarkable works of the painter. In the museum you can also find a collection of drawings from his Parisian period, which includes landscapes, nude portraits and interiors. Apart from the works of Theodor Pallady, the museum also houses other works from a collection donated by Gheorghe and Serafina Răuț and some other paintings of French and other foreign artists.
History Of Melik House
Melik House was built around 1760 which makes it the oldest private building in Bucharest which still survives today. The house resembles a traditional Wallachian peasant house with a high cellar and a glass-covered veranda.
The original owner sold the house in 1815 to the wealthy Armenian merchant Kevork Nazaretoglu and several years later the house was donated to his grand-daughter when she married the well-known architect Iacub Melik. Because of his involvement in the 1848 revolution, during which he offered the revolutionaries Ion Heliade Rădulescu, C.A. Rosetti and Ion C. Brătianu shelter in the attic of the house, he was exiled from the country. When he returned to the house nine years later, it was ruined.
Melik decided to renovate the house and lived there with his wife until his death in 1885. When his wife died in 1913, the house was left to the Armenian community and functioned as a temporary shelter and asylum until 1947. At the end of the 1960s the art collectors Gheorghe and Serafina Răuț agreed with the authorities about the donation of their art collection under the condition that it would be set up in a museum. After a major renovation of the Melik House in 1970, the Theodor Pallady Museum was opened for this purpose.
