Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/148

, a good technicist, but, unfortunately, a man of shallow mind, who turned the living precepts of his master into a rigid, lifeless formula. His portraits are faultlessly drawn and methodically painted, but by their dryness and lack of animation they remind one of coloured photographs.

In addition to Venetzianov, there worked in the first half of the nineteenth century several other realists, who, however, busied themselves almost exclusively with portraits. To these belong Varneck, a very spirited artist and an excellent draughtsman, who, unfortunately, used an unpleasant colour gamut; and the delicate water colour painters: P. T. Sokolov, M. Terebenev, and A. Bryullov. Several first-class intérieurs, executed entirely in Venetzianov's manner, belong also to the brush of Count T. P. Tolstoy, In these the stern empire setting is rendered graceful and snug by the intimacy of the execution. These belong to the most touching pictures of the Russian School.

In the twenties there came into prominence in the West the so-called genre, that is, sentimental, facetious or moralising stories, rendered in painting. This kind of painting was imported into Russia in the thirties. It attracted several followers among Russian painters, such as Sternberg, who died prematurely, Neff, to some extent, and, somewhat later, Ivan