The Russian School of Painting
gomolov, and Ropet and pointed out several essential principles of Old-Russian beauty: its noble picturesqueness, purposefulness, strength, calmness, and simplicity. But even Vasnetzov could not achieve the impossible. Unable to resuscitate the dead, he made nothing but an approximate pasticcio, which for a time charmed all the dilettantes, eager for new impressions. Vasnetzov's art, respectable in its intentions as it is, was in the eighties and nineties nothing but a Moscow fashion. It was a more attractive fashion than the Petrograd fad for the works of artists like Ropet and Hartman, yet it was a fashion, that is, something essentially ephemereal and unreal. Nowadays—O irony of fate!—Moscow is enthusiastic over the Russian "Empire," the "décadent style," and Somov, as she was, yesterday, over Vasnetzov, Old-Russian palaces, cupboards, fairy-tales, and "bylinas" (old hero ballads).
Vasnetzov did not stand alone in his endeavour to evoke the Old-Russian beauty. In the eighties there worked in the same field the talented, but not very skilful amateur. Count Sollogub, responsible for amusing illustrations and several decorative works. Later on, the camp of painter-nationalists grew more populous. It included Miss Polyenov, Davydov, Malyutin, Korovin, Roerich, Golovin, Bilibin, and many others. At one time, Vrubel, too, fell under the in-
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