Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/54

 in a society which was growing coarser. As to decorative painting, it settles into that dull groove of archaeological realism and cheap féerie effects in which it still runs.

A whole pleiad of artists continued the work of the topographer Makhayev. At that time there was felt a real need for them, born of the same impulse that made the Russian noblemen have their portraits painted. It was the time of proud self-immortalisation. Russia of the old régime, that is, before the reign of Peter the Great, was little more than one vast, uniform, wretched village, with the exception of Moscow, Kazan and, perhaps, a couple of other cities. Civil architecture was in the embryonic state. Even the czar's palaces were accumulations, picturesque, but absurd in their confusion. These home-bred surroundings did not rhyme with the caftans and wigs of the nobility. There arose an urgent need of a regulation of architecture and horticulture. Both Peter and his successors, especially Elizabeth and Catherine, took serious interest in the building of palaces and villas, and in cultivating gardens and parks. Following their example, the magnates began to build, and toward the end of the century all the nobility was seized by the building mania.

Of course, just as all these caftans, rapiers, and wigs