The Russian School of Painting
patron and friend of many artists of the early nineteenth century. A gloomy, greenish tone, glaring light with deep shadows, which lend Kiprensky's good-natured face an enigmatic and weird air, mellow colours laid on thickly, somewhat slipshod drawing,—all this betrays the fact that the artist was not greatly moved by the lucidity and transparence preached by Winkelmann.
In other portraits Kiprensky is more sober, probably in order to please his clients, yet he is ever overflowing with life and passion. With the exception of his last works, Kiprensky's canvases are never dull. In the portraits of Denis Davydov and in his incomparable numerous drawings of the heroes of the Fatherland War (with Napoleon, 1812) there lives a vivid reflection of that turbulent and beautiful epoch. In his portraits of ladies Kiprensky rendered the somewhat studied sweetness and the poetic delicacy of the fair readers of Karamzin[1] and Mrs. Radcliffe. Even his portraits of venerable and heavy statesmen arrayed in stern surtouts and propped with huge frills, owe to a magnificent combination of colour tones a certain agreeable softness and a great artistic value. Unfortunately, Kiprensky's career was just the reverse of that of similarly gifted
- ↑ Karamzin (see note to p. 62) was the author of tales, written in the sentimental manner which was fashionable at that time in Germany and in England. (Translator's note.)
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