The Russian School of Painting
portance. They sowed the seed of protest against a scholastic formula forced upon the artists. Henceforward the most vigorous and independent part of Russian artistic youth will cling to the "Artel," feed on its theories, if not actually become members, and be sustained by the spiritual firmness which was generated and upheld by the first private artistic community in Russia. Later on, with the establishment of the "Society of Wandering Exhibitions" (in 1870) the rôle of such "headquarters" of the most advanced Russian art passed to the Society, and remained there for more than twenty years, until the appearance of the exhibitions of the "Mir Iskusstva" ("The World of Art").
And yet the most prominent of our preachers and denunciators in art was an artist who did not belong either to the "Artel" or to the Society. To the isolated figure of V. V. Vereshchagin belongs the honour of being, after Perov, the most pronounced representative of the new artistic views.
Vereshchagin (1842–1904) is a personality very typical of the sixties and seventies. Unlike most of his fellow-artists, who came from the people and were cut off from "society" by their lack of breeding, Vereshchagin, by his origin, education, and social position, belonged to this "society." That is why his art
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