The Russian School of Painting
pletely to literature. Young Russian literature—it made its appearance under Elizabeth—presently found itself represented by men who could compare favourably with the greatest European talents. Russian letters at one proud, easy sweep soared up to the highest summit of Western culture, but neither Russian life as a whole nor particularly Russian art, was able to keep pace with literature. The fabulous precocity of Russian literature can be explained by the fact that during the long reign of Catherine II the higher class of society achieved a remarkable degree of refinement and culture. With the exception of Krylov and Koltzov, that period did not produce any great literary talents or call forth any valuable creative efforts outside of the aristocracy, or the nobility, in general. But, while the ranks of the writers were filled from the higher classes, Russian artists, on the contrary, were recruited from the middle and lower classes, which at that time possessed very little culture. Small wonder that the artist could not come up to the level of such profound and mighty representatives of Russian literature as were Pushkin, Gogol, Zhukovsky, Lermontov and the pleiad of the minor poets, known as the "Pushkin Group."
The origin of our best artists was lowly: Kiprensky and Tropinin were serfs, Varnek's father was a cabinet-maker, Alexander Ivanov was the son of a foun-
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