Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/172



NE of the peculiar traits of Russian Realism was that the boldest and most resolute followers of an art based on the study of the surrounding world very willingly abandoned this reality and turned to history, that is to a domain where the immediate connection with actuality is, naturally, lost. Courbet, Monet, Dégas did not attempt historical painting, and it is even hard to picture how artists, so passionately enamoured of living life could seek for inspiration in the graveyards of the ages. True, Mentzel proved that a realistic artist could live at once in two epochs, and be equally successful in his portrayal of both the past and the present. But Mentzel is an exception, the most remarkable exception in the whole history of art. The Pre-Raphaelites cannot prove the compatibility of realism and history either, because history in their art was not a digression from the intended course, but rather the point of departure. Late offshoots of Romanticism, they grew up on historical painting. This they first refreshed by the