Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/58

 belongs to his first-rate picture in the Museum of Alexander III. It is the "Quay of the Neva," executed in glowing colours laid on thick, with a skill unusual even for Western art, in a wonderfully gorgeous colour-scale. The work makes it evident that Alexeyev diligently studied the landscape-painters of his times: B. Belotto and Hubert Robert, and his numerous excellent copies from these masters corroborate this conjecture. Of nearly equal merit are his Neva landscapes in the Winter and Tzarskoye Selo Palaces, and in the Tretyakov and Yusupov galleries. Far weaker are his Moscow and Crimea landscapes. Educated on the architectural forms of the classical West, having borrowed his noble, somewhat monotonous palette from Belotto, Robert and Guardi—he was dazed in the motley, grotesque Moscow and under the shining sun of the South. And so, quite in keeping with the spirit of his times, he lent Moscow the character of a romantic "Gothic" city. Nevertheless, even in these productions, Alexyeyev is superior to all his Russian colleagues and even such foreign masters as Paterson and Damame.

These pictures, too, are notable for the truly artistic temperament, the sense of colour, and the great technical knowledge they display. What lends a peculiar charm to Alexeyev's paintings are the human figures