FIRST OFF . . .

A collection of 38 French masterpieces from the Soviet Union will be exhibited at London’s National Gallery this summer, a museum spokeswoman said Monday. The exhibition, from the Hermitage and Pushkin museums, will be the first major show of its kind in Britain and will include canvases by Impressionist masters Sisley, Monet and Renoir and Post-Impressionists Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Several well-known works from Matisse’s Fauve period and Picasso’s “Blue” and Cubist phases will also be shown. (The Soviet Union has one of the world’s top collections of works by Matisse and Picasso.) Paintings by 18th- and 19th-Century artists such as Watteau and Ingres are also among the collection. The spokeswoman said the National Gallery would be sending a reciprocal loan of paintings from its collection of European masters to the Soviet Union.