Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/192

 In Rome he contented himself with copying celebrated views and interesting historical monuments, without endeavouring to give expression to any mood whatever. Nevertheless, there is an abyss between Silvester Shchedrin and the rest of Russian landscape painters of the times, an abyss which separates a true pictorial gift from sheer diligence and an acquired manner.

Silvester Shchedrin, one of the first Russian masters, is just as truly a classic of Russian painting as Levitzky, Kiprensky, Venetzianov, Bryullov, and Bruni. He is a true painter by the grace of God, who knew the fervour of inspiration and who possessed a workmanship which is not taught in any Academy. Neither Alexeyev, nor Semyon Shchedrin can be looked upon as his guides; if he is indebted to anybody for his technical development, it is to the seventeenth century Dutch: to Berchem, Peinaker, Both, and I. B. Vinix, who alone could teach him that softness of the brush, that sharpness of drawing, that airiness and beauty of colours, which assure Silvester Shchedrin the foremost place in the European landscape painting of his time. Unfortunately, death took him away prematurely, and his last, unfinished pictures, where there is no trace of his original dryness and timidity, permit us to surmise, into how great a master he could have grown.

Fate was even more pitiless to the next great Russian