Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/193

 landscape painter, M. Lebedev, who died (in 1836) at the age of twenty-four. Elsewhere we set too high a value on his early endeavours, which betray the "provincial" helplessness of Russian technical preparation, the influence of bad models, and the pursuit of false refinement—all qualities natural in a young artist. In Rome, however, where Lebedev did not find Shchedrin, but where he was fortunate enough to meet Ivanov, the artist rapidly freed himself from his "Petrograd" defects and began to create works which display a deep knowledge of nature and lay bare the delicate musical soul of the painter. Only some details of his later pictures bear the imprint of the bad taste of his Russian instructors. But the general effect of his paintings, their mellow, almost "savoury" colours, their consummate technique point toward an amazing firmness of intention and a great artistic gift. To judge by some peculiarities of his manner, such as is exhibited in his works of the thirties, we may lament in him the loss of a Russian Corot or Rousseau.

The further development of Russian landscape painting until the seventies is not rich in great and remarkable masters. Bits of good landscape backgrounds we can find in the canvases of our great painters, such as Venetzianov and Bryullov; Ivanov and Count Gagarin have excellent studies from nature;