Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/202

 rendition of difficult pictorial effects in nature—and also in the first endeavours of Levitan and A. Vasnetzov. Finally, many new words were uttered and many precious discoveries made in the field of landscape painting by painters who did not specialise in landscape, such as Repin, Vereshchagin, Surikov, V. Vasnetzov, and Nesterov.

"The Quiet Convent" (1891) may be considered the first fully conscious and mature work of Levitan (1861–1900). Until then the master was only essaying his power, developing the themes which had been already exploited by Vasilyev and Polyenov. A trip abroad (in 1889), and especially the works of the Barbizon masters, which he saw at the World Exhibition, opened his eyes, and ever since then he found his way and saw his goal.

The younger generation now accuses Levitan of being a "literary" painter. But it is this very quality of his art which the "Wanderers," Levitan's first comrades, praised in him. Levitan, it seemed to them, created a new type of landscape painting: a landscape with a story. Gradually, however, Levitan began consciously and persistently to free himself from the inartistic programme of the "Wanderers," and even before he became connected with the group of the "Mir Iskusstva" ("World of Art"), he stood on a firm and quite