The Russian School of Painting
who has perceived and rendered the distinctive fascination of his fatherland and who has also grasped the psychology of the Russian mind, but there is not a trace in his manner of that premeditated, "literary" approach, which mars the art of his predecessors.
Syerov never painted "scenes from Russian life," but his landscapes, like the best ones of Levitan, in revealing the distinctive poetry of modern Russian art and in unfolding the master's intimate knowledge of Russian nature, testify to the depth of self-consciousness and to the maturity of Russian society. Only a mature personality can assume a conscious attitude toward the charm of the surrounding world. At the same time Syerov's portraits, utterly simple and direct, but of a consummate craftsmanship—are a genuine and multiform monument of the Russian society of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. For Russia of that complex and gloomy epoch Syerov's portrait gallery will be of the same value as van-der-Helst's portraits for Holland and those of Largillière for courtly France.
Syerov succeeded in painting a long series of prominent leaders of modern Russia, and this in spite of his surliness, excessive straightforwardness and unsociability, and in spite of the ignorance of our society in matters of art. This series starts with the Emperor
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