Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/218

 In this Moscow circle of artists K. Korovin (born in 1861) represents le côté bohème. He is "Apollo's favourite," a great and delicate talent, but rather unbalanced, reaching at many things but completing nothing. He is not the only one at fault, however. Like Vrubel, Korovin was not sufficiently appreciated by Russian society. It is astonishing that his magnificent panels for Mr. Mamontov and for the World Exhibition have remained unique in his work, and that no one else desired to utilise his eminent and original decorative talent.

V. A. Telyakovsky, the Director of the Imperial Theatres, is to be credited with having engaged Korovin in theatrical decoration and secured his material well-being. But wall painting and stage decoration are not the same, and we cannot see without sorrow that Korovin, and also Golovin, waste their energies on these ephemeral productions. The folly of this "work in the void" must be evident to the artists themselves, and in the consciousness of this fact lies perhaps the cause of the slovenliness and inconsistency which is noticeable in their work and which we have deemed it necessary to point out many a time.

In the purely pictorial respect Korovin occupies a place apart. He is the creator of a delicate and original colour gamut, in which grey and dim colour values