Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/128

 As a result, we have something in the nature of "official reports," repugnant, but quivering with life, and, therefore, inspiring terror, which, at any rate, will preserve for themselves a place of honour in the painting of the end of the nineteenth century. These works undoubtedly possess serious and rare qualities; they are absolutely devoid of triviality, they are luminous, wholly individual utterances, all white-hot with sincerity and noble conviction. This unbeautiful art of Gay's cannot be denied inner, spiritual nobleness, and in art, as in life, nobility is one of the rarest and most precious things.

This same rare quality distinguishes also Gay's portraits, probably the best Russian portraits of the second half of the nineteenth century. His faces are not only life-like to a truly startling degree, they also bear the imprint of the artist's noble mind. They are absolutely devoid of cheap emphasis,—the delight of Gay's colleagues, who were all educated on the civic rhetoric of the sixties, and were finally poisoned by it. Gay approached the portrait with immense curiosity and with the most palpitating, almost pious attention to his object. He, whose attitude toward Christ was so premeditated, relinquished all set intention, all "arrangement" in his portraits. These are not rich in striking effects, but on all of them lies the imprint of the living