An Epistolary Preface
was by no means obliterated. Changes took place along all lines of activity. And yet while Peterhof became a miniature Versailles, and French was prattled in the salons and beneath the protecting trees of Tzarskoye Sélo, much that was old continued untouched and echoes of the passionate, enigmatic East still persisted.
In art as in life a sturdy racial integrity is with each Russian an inevitable birthright. The Russ everywhere reveals his power of direct, concrete observation and his ability to grasp the vital aspects of a given scene or situation and to achieve in their presentation a convincing measure of actuality. It is such salutary tendencies that, my dear Benois, mark the earlier portions of your comprehensive and sympathetic monograph. The floodtide of realism whether historic or contemporary was, as you have indicated, reached with the work of Repin and his successor, Valentin Syerov.
The movement during the past two decades has been away from realism and naturalism and in the direction of decorative symbolism. The ideals of the "Mir Iskusstva" men have been continued by the younger spirits who to-day write for "Apollon." Your own contributions whether with brush or pen, as well as those of your colleagues Somov, Bilibin, Ostroumova, Lebedeva, and Lanceray follow logically in the wake of that striving for more purely æsthetic conquests which had
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