Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov has bought the entire art collection of the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich before it was due to be auctioned in London. Rostropovich, who died in April, aged 80, and is regarded as the greatest cellist of the 20th century, collected the pieces over 30 years.

Mstislav Rostropovich

Usmanov paid “substantially more” than the £20 million estimate, has announced that he will present the 450 artworks to the Russian state to keep the collection intact, saying “When I knew that this collection would be sold at auction, I felt the need to try to preserve the collection in its entirety.”

Russia’s 18th-richest man, Usmanov purchased a 14.6% stake in the Arsenal football club last month, for £75 million.

Rostropovich’s widow, opera star Galina Vishnevskaya has said she hopes the works will be put on display in St Petersburg. She put the collection up for sale because of the security and insurance costs of keeping them at her homes in Paris and London.

One item in the collection, Boris Grigoriev’s Faces of Russia, is considered the most important painting to emerge from Russia since the Communist revolution and, if it had been sold at auction, was expected to fetch between £1.5m and £2m. Painted in 1921, the artist loved the piece so much he refused to part with it in his lifetime and had it mounted on to a folding five-panelled screen so that it could be exhibited around Western Europe and America.

Boris Grigoriev’s Faces of Russia

The collection also includes First Steps by Alexei Venetsianov, one of the first Russian artists to paint peasant scenes, and 22 works by Ilya Repin, including a portrait of the poet Alexander Pushkin.

Although Rostropovich was a vocal critic of Soviet repression and escaped to the West with his wife to avoid persecution, his death was described by President Putin as “a huge loss for Russian culture”. Putin hosted a Kremlin banquet to mark the musician’s 80th birthday in March and presented him with the Order for Services to the Fatherland first class - Russia’s highest honour.

Sotheby’s was in charge of the planned auction, and says that it is “highly unusual” for one buyer to scoop up an entire collection of this calibre. However, it is not without unprecedent - Viktor Vekselberg paid $90 million in 2004 for Faberge eggs owned by the late US businessman Malcolm Forbes, returning them to Russia. He also spent $1 million to sponsor the return of historic church bells from Harvard University to the Danilov monastery this summer.

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