The Russian School of Painting
and among Sternberg's pretentious productions we meet, now and then, with modest sketches from nature, which approach Lebedev and the later paintings of F. Vasilyev. But, with the exception of Peter Sokolov, who stands alone, we do not find a single great independent landscape painter, who can even faintly remind us of the conquests of realism in the field of landscape, which, at that time, were achieved in France, and which came to expression in the art of the "Barbizon School." The most interesting figure among the Russian landscape painters of the forties and fifties is Ayvazovsky, who was swayed by a Romantic spirit stronger than his fellow-artists, and who is favourably distinguished from his moderate and reasonable comrades by his passion for the sea. But even Ayvazovsky does not stand comparison with the West. He is only a poor copy from such magnificent connoisseurs of the sea as Gudin, and Louis Isabey. As to his "grandiose conceptions" they repeat the setting and the style of Turner's follower, John Martin, who was one of the favourite painters of the Romantic epoch.
The triumphs of Realism in the fifties and sixties found their expression also in landscape art. Two painters were the pioneers of Russian realistic landscape: Baron M. K. Klodt, and Shishkin. This does not mean, however, that the merits of other artists must
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