Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/186

 ; Vrubel created no school, for his art was too original and complex. But Vrubel alone is worth an entire school. He was the sole true and beautiful idealist of the later period of Russian art.

V. Vasnetzov's most remarkable paintings are his: "Stone Age," "Ivan the Terrible," "The Bogatyrs" (Heroes), and "Alenushka." In these, the master rose to a considerable height; he freed himself from dilettante-like mawkishness, and exhibited a fine workmanship, which is difficult to find in his other pictures. This is especially true of "Alenushka." There is music in this picture: soft sobbing and tender, sad song. The landscape is replete with the mysteriousness of loneliness and all the fascination of deep forests, of marsh pools, and of a grey, pensive day. This picture shows that Vasnetzov housed the soul of a true artist, which could not come to expression and unfold itself owing to various circumstances, such as defective schooling, an insufficient understanding of the problems of art, orders unsuited to his talent, the success of his worst pictures, and an infatuation with false nationalistic ideas. Not possessing the strong character and the gift of complete isolation, which were Surikov's shield, V. Vasnetzov was all his life swayed by various influences, and herein lies the cause of the incompleteness of his art and of all its disagreeable defects.