Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/33

 eager to revive all the educational projects inaugurated by Peter the Great, but whose views of art and artistic education, naturally, shared all the usual defects of those times. The fabulous luxury of those days necessitated the existence of our own artist-craftsmen, but nobody at that day thought of our own, original, national art. The prestige of scholastic æsthetics stood in the way of a deeper insight into the essence of art, into its pure, inspirational nature.

There is a peculiar trait of the Russian School of Painting in its early phase, which has also somewhat influenced its subsequent development. Painting in Russia came into existence not as a response to the demands of her entire society. It was rather the will of the Government and of the aristocracy, who longed for the externalities of life similar to those of the West, that called Russian painting into life. That is why it would be useless to look for an original national spirit even in the best representatives of the Russian School of the eighteenth century. We can find some ten gifted and very well educated artists, who on account of their purely pictorial merits may be placed alongside of the best names of the European schools; but these masters lack utterly the original, personal note, the specific "Russian" sensibility.

That is why the best that was done in Russian