Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/168

 he made technique and colour effects subsidiary to rational, non-artistic considerations.

Repin's misfortune lies in that, having become a devotee of the formula of narrative painting, he also conceived the idea that he possessed a powerful dramatic talent. Of course, Repin was a great artist, and as such, a very impressionable man, with a gift for grasping things in an easy and interesting manner. Yet, his calling was not narrative painting, but painting pure and simple. By means of clever calculations, Repin succeeded in arranging his pictures so as to elicit sensational effects of great clarity (as in the "Church Procession"), or a truly tragical note (in "Ivan the Terrible"), or a broad humour (in "The Zaporogian Cossacks"). All these paintings betray great cleverness and dexterity, but there is no truly deep mood in them, no living revelations of the type we find in Ivanov and in Surikov.

Repin's best work are, surely, his portraits. But a certain coarseness mars even these. Repin is a purely external talent, yet in his portraits he tried his utmost to go into the depths of psychological analysis. Consequently, his portraits are insipid as far as colour ones and composition are concerned; they are drawn and modelled neglectfully, carelessly and painted without beauty; and, as characterisation, they are full