Religious Painting
nearly always disguised by an illustrator's "dexterity."
Vasnetzov had no regular artistic school, and this lack of schooling is felt throughout his works. It is natural that Vasnetzov could not create his own artistic school. A few artists, however, who assimilated his manner and applied it in the decoration, in the so-called Russian style,—of numerous churches, seem to refute this statement. In reality, this group of artists,—among whom Nesterov is the only master of some independence and of a considerable artistic temperament,—does not constitute a school. The prerequisite for the appearance of a school are definite technical acquisitions, or a certain technical drilling, which these artists absolutely lack.
Nesterov, however, would have been one of the most pleasant of Russian painters, had he remained faithful to his talent, to his peculiar vocation. Nesterov could have been an excellent landscape painter. This is proved by the background of most of his canvases. Unfortunately beside the wonderful landscapes there is very little in his pictures to hold the eye, and the landscape plays but a secondary part. It is only in his "Vision of St. Bartholomew" that the figures do not spoil the admirable, truly Russian landscape, which unrolls behind them. On the contrary, they even emphasise its festal sorrow, and its poignant sadness is in keeping
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