Realism, and "Purpose" Painting
Hooch, and his "Peasants." All these works have made good their claim to belong to the classics of the Russian School.
Venetzianov was fully aware of the importance of his efforts, and he strove to strengthen the art he inaugurated. He did not hesitate to defy the Academy when he found himself driven to it, and he founded his own Academy, with careful study of nature as its sole guiding principle. His enterprise found financial support, and at one time Venetzianov's school flourished. It sent out Plakhov, Zaryanko, Krylov, Mikhailov, Mokritzky, Krendovsky, Zelentzov, Tyranov, Shchedrovsky—all of them—modest, plain people, who, however, transmitted to posterity the true image of their times. Among them Krylov (died in 1850) and Tyranov (1808–1859) are distinguished by delicacy, but it is Shchedrovsky who accomplished most, leaving a long gallery of types, in which Petrograd of Gogol's times lives again. Unfortunately, Venetzianov's school could not get deeply rooted, and the master lived to see, in his old age, his best pupils, dazzled by Bryullov's success, desert him to pass into the camp of the painter of "Pompeii," where they rapidly lost their freshness and turned into cold, pompous academicists. Only one follower remained faithful to Venetzianov's precepts. This was Zaryanko (1818-
117
