History and Fairy-Tale
Vasnetzov's ideas were utilised not only by the official world, which saw in him the awaited "truly Russian" national artist, but also by all that was vigorous and young in Russian art. The gauntlet was thrown down to "purpose" painting and Realism. The slogan of these protestants was the cult of Old-Russian culture, a somewhat Slavophile slogan, directly opposed to the school of the sixties, with its sympathies for the Westerners—and soon Vasnetzov was followed by a number of painters who in their art left far behind them the propaganda of typical "Wanderers." The fir-trees in "Alenushka," Savrasov's "Spring," and Surikov's landscape backgrounds resulted in Levitan; and Vasnetzov's "Snyegurochka" (1884) inaugurated our "fairy-tale" painting and led to the Moscow revival of our decorative art in the works of Miss Polyenov, Malyutin, Golovin, and others. Though this movement has not given us a single truly great artist, though it is essentially little more than impracticable dilettanteism, nevertheless, as a page of the history of our culture, it undoubtedly possesses a great interest.
149
