The Russian School of Painting
sian landscapes, show him as a great master and a true artist. Together with him may be named the unassuming Sverchkov (1817–1898), an artist who, although neither very gifted nor skilful, created a separate branch of painting for himself, where he gave ample expression to his artless love for the "Russian horse."
The father of Russian "purpose" painting was P. A. Fedotov (1815–1852), a poor army officer, and an ardent enthusiast for art, who turned to the "petty" kind of realistic painting, partly because, as a dilettante and self-taught man, he felt himself unequal to graver and higher tasks. The circumstances of his life played, however, a considerable part in the shaping of his talent. The son of a modest retired officer, Fedotov grew up in half-provincial Moscow, in a typical middle-class family. Here he became familiar with the every-day life of the residents of lonely city districts. Later on, in the military school and in the society of his comrades he acquired a familiarity with military circles which played so important a role under Nicholas I. Finally, when he came in contact with the artistic world, it was too late to go to school: he was already a fully formed man with well-shaped ideas and a manner of his own of perceiving and rendering things.
In the middle of the forties the "tendency" was al-
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