The painter Victor Hartmann was a close friend of Modest Mussorgsky and when he died, unexpectedly, of an aneurism in 1873 aged only 39, Mussorgsky was devastated. A couple of weeks after his passing, Hartmann's friends and supporters organized an exhibition of his paintings at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.
And about a year later, Mussorgsky channeled his pain into a new piano work, making his memories of his close friend immortal.
Most of the works that inspired Pictures have been lost in time, but thanks to Mussorgsky’s music that they are still remembered today.
After Mussorgsky's death, in 1881, this work fell into oblivion. Until 1922, when the great conductor Serge Koussevitzky commissioned Maurice Ravel to orchestrate it.
