Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/169

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Realism, and "Purpose" Painting

of gross and disagreeable emphasis. In this respect, they are far below the intelligent portraits of Gay, and even the precise portraits of Kramskoy.

Perov, Vereshchagin and Repin are the main bulwarks of Russian interpretative Realism, but alongside these there worked many artists of similar tendencies, whose works are of great interest for the history of art, and, above all, for the history of Russian culture. Especially typical representatives of Purpose Painting are the following: the stern Savitzky, the conscientious, dry Maksimov, and Yaroshenko, who immortalised the "nihilistic" youth of the seventies and eighties. Less powerful, but nevertheless typical works were produced by Shmelkov (1819–1890), by Korzukhin (1835–1894), Lemokh, Morozov and Zhuravlev (1836–1901), members of the group of "Thirteen Competitors," who seceded in 1863; also Zagorsky, Scadovsky, Popov, Solomatkin, M. P. Klodt and others. Finally, Bogdanov-Byelsky, Baksheyev, and Kasatkin are "the epigoni" of the movement, who keep on until this very day playing the tunes of the artistic programme of the sixties.

Among the epigones must be reckoned also Vladimir Makovsky (born in 1846), although he is only two years younger than Repin. Makovsky has all the characteristic traits of an epigone. His art has neither

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