Romanticism
ters, and the "Belgians," who considered themselves,—with the complete assent of the public at large,—the true heirs of the Romantic æsthetics. The genuinely great art of the West did not reach Petrograd. Neither Millet, nor Böcklin, nor the Pre-Raphaelites, nor our own Ivanov found a single vivid echo in Russia,—at any rate, not a single true follower. But this senile pseudo-Romanticism penetrated into all the pores of the culture of our higher classes, together with the fashions and morals of the Second Empire. Characteristic of those times is the great success in Russia of artists like the sugared Chopin, the mawkish Neff, and, especially, Zichy, who came to Russia late in the forties. The latter, a highly gifted master of a perfect technique is such a pronounced representative of the Romantic decadence that he would merit to be treated here at some length, did he not rank himself among Western painters.
It is in this atmosphere that K. Makovsky was brought up, and its reflection lies on the whole of his output. His colours are derived from the palette of Neff and Zichy, his themes have the insipidity peculiar to all "costume" painters; as a fantastic artist he does not go beyond the sensuality which marks all the salon art which flooded the art market in the middle of the nineteenth century, at the moment of the triumph of
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