The Russian School of Painting
painful pursuit of the elusive ideal of beautiful painting he worked his pictures over and over, seeking for a manner which would be uniformly skilful, free, masterly, and at the same time absolutely "solid." And, in fact, his last pictures, by the beauty of their surface, the softness and tenderness of the stroke, by their "bodied," strong pâte—can rank with the best productions of nineteenth century painting, the works of Constable, Daubigny and Dupré included. It was a great step forward for the Russian School. Levitan renewed the connection with the West, disrupted since Lebedev's death.
Technical achievements alone do not, however, exhaust Levitan's importance in the history of Russian painting. Levitan is the father of an entire school of landscape painting, which constitutes one of the most attractive pages in the annals of Russian art. What Vasilyev aspired to, what the works of Savrasov, Polyenov, V. Vasnetzov and others foretold—that Levitan brought to final consummation. Levitan discovered the peculiar charm of Russian landscape "moods"; he found the distinctive Russian landscape style and created in painting worthy illustrations to the admirable poetry of Pushkin, Koltzov, Gogol, Turgenev, and Tyutchev. He rendered the inexplicable charm of our humble poverty, the shoreless breadth of
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