Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/105

This page has been validated.

Romanticism

landscape painter, who turned, for no reason whatever, to historical painting,—Lapchenko,—Zavyalov, and Shamshin, Basin's pupils, hopelessly dull official painters, who did not escape the contagion of Bryullov's sensational effects,—all these do not add any charm to this current of Russian painting. Greater values were contributed by the next generation. True followers of Bryullov were: Gay, who will be treated shortly,—Flavitzky (1830–1866), a master not without temperament, responsible for the touching "Princess Tarakanov," one of the most popular works of the entire Russian school,—Plyeshanov (1829–1882), known chiefly as the painter of "Ivan the Terrible and the Priest Silvestre,"—and P. P. Chistyakov, the painter of "Sophie, the daughter of Vitovt." Finally, Bryullov's influence can be traced in the last great representatives of our academic art: in K. Makovsky, G. Semiradsky, Mikyeshin, Polyenov and Iacobi.

The foremost among these masters is K. Makovsky, incontestably one of the greatest talents of the Russian School of Painting. Makovsky's misfortune lies in his age; the formative period of his artistic personality coincided with the reign of what may be termed "the décadence of Romanticism," and all his life K. Makovsky remained an epigone of Romanticism, In spite of his temporary infatuation with the civic propaganda of

89