The Russian School of Painting
considered as Ivanov's successors in religious painting.
Gay (1831–1894) may be looked upon as Ivanov's nearest successor because of some similarity in their aims and problems. Despite the fact that Gay himself pointed out his dependence on Ivanov, his whole personality differs essentially from Ivanov's. When Gay, late in the forties, entered the Academy, he did not find there the old scholastic discipline and drill. This school, even though it tormented Ivanov with its pedantic requirements, laid in him that firm foundation of knowledge which is exhibited in every stroke of his brush and constitutes his distinguishing trait. Gay remained a half-dilettante. At times, through the power of his natural endowments he succeeded in attaining a certain perfection and beauty, but in most cases he did not meet the demands of painting. Gay's highest technical achievement is a certain brilliancy and originality of colouring, but the drawing in his canvases is, with rare exceptions, childish and sometimes even lapses into ugly slovenliness and grossness. There was another reason why Gay could not be the true successor of Ivanov. Gay absorbed all the poisons of Herzen's epoch, and his mind held a queer combination of sympathies for Bryullov's masked-ball art, of sincere rapture at the sight of absolute beauty, and of an enthu-
102
