The V.A. Tropinin Museum and the Moscow artists of his time is located in a historic building that is an architectural monument. This house with a mezzanine is one of the few preserved examples of merchant estates in the Zamoskvorechye area.

The last owner of the house was Nikolai Grigoryevich Petukhov, an ethnographer and economist, a professor who preserved it after the revolution. He bequeathed the house to his friend, the well-known collector and connoisseur of Russian painting Felix Evgenievich Vishnevsky. Vishnevsky established the museum here in 1969, which opened on February 11, 1971. Later, he donated the house and his collection to the city.

The museum's collection is based on the works of Vasily Tropinin, the founder of the "Moscow School" of painting and the favorite portraitist of Moscow in the first half of the 19th century. The collection also includes works by I.Ya. Vishnyakov, I.P. Argunov, A.P. Antropov, F.S. Rokotov, D.G. Levitsky, V.L. Borovikovsky, S.F. Shchedrin, S.S. Shchukin, and many other masters.

The museum houses about 3000 works of painting, graphics, and decorative applied arts.