History and Fairy-Tale
tion of realism, but later on they gradually rejected the latter and made their way either to actuality or to free idealism.
Matters were different in Russia. Here, the evolution of the foremost artists went in the opposite direction, or, rather, their course consisted of confused digressions and inconsistencies. Perov and Vereshchagin did not begin with historical painting; they came to it only toward the end of their careers. Repin did not show in his academic years any serious disposition toward historical painting—the scholastic themes, forced upon him, are, of course, out of consideration. He began to treat historical subjects after the creation of his realistic pictures, or simultaneously. The same inconsistencies can be observed in the art of Gay and Kramskoy, and the cause of it is to be sought not in some peculiar "freedom" of the Russian artists, nor in the breadth of their views, but rather in the amorphous state of their theoretical outlook on life and in their subjection to the temporary interests of society. Many have seen in the ease with which Repin passed from nihilists and peasants to brocade vestments, to the wonderland of the sea, or to the depiction of Saint Nicholas and the "Third Temptation," simply the effect of his vivid temperament, impressionability, and impulsiveness. But it seems to us that these fits and
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