Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/82

 nineteenth century, went through a period of efflorescence, which has not, since, repeated itself. Despite the trammels of the Academy, the lack of culture among the artists, and their humble position in society, despite the vagueness of their aspirations and the eternal compromise between the impulses of the mind divided between the general movement and the scholastic precepts,—despite all this, there rests on these Russian artists the reflection of Romanticism, and all of them, unconscious, weak, and bewildered, as they often were, are nevertheless true children of their time.

The series of these masters of the Romantic period begins with Kiprensky, who, despite his serf origin, is in artistic temperament one of the most truly aristocratic of Russian artists. Of course, Kiprensky's personality is not so clear, pronounced, and significant as those of some French masters, his contemporaries and brothers in spirit. It is nevertheless true that Kiprensky was drawn irresistibly to what it is customary to call Romanticism,—at least, to some of its characteristic aspects. Neither the Academy nor our bureaucratic society, indifferent to problems of art, was able to check this impulse. Regardless of the example of Ugryumov, Yegorov and Shebuyev, Kiprensky took a greater interest in the old colourists, than in the cold, white plaster-of-Paris casts. Colour was his main