Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/233



E ought to have ended our work with the preceding chapter, treating of the art of yesterday, which is sufficiently remote from us to be correctly estimated. The art of Levitan and that of Syerov and Korovin who are now in the heyday of their powers—already belong to the past, and we can discuss this phase of the history of Russian painting without running the risk of losing the right perspective. These phenomena have already reached maturity and completely crystallised; they have passed through the stage of negation, through the second stage of indiscriminate enthusiasm, and now they are entering the celebrated phase of "re-valuation." Besides, the quiet, balanced art of Levitan and Syerov hardly needs any special viewpoints or any distance for its appreciation.

This is not the case with a series of phenomena in our painting, which are just now being born, or which are just receiving a definite shape and becoming conscious of themselves. It would be absurd to demand