Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

I pity him for having seen Italy, since he was obliged to return to the north ! He does not work hard ; and unfortunately his rapid facility, which is here viewed as a merit, appears but too plainly in his pieces. It is only by assiduous pains and labour that he could succeed in conquering the stiffness of his design, and the crudeness of his colouring. Great painters know the difficulty of learning to design without the pencil, to paint by the intershading and blending of colours, to efface from the canvass, lines which exist nowhere in nature, to show the air, which exists everywhere, to conceal art,—in short, faithfully to depict the real, yet at the same time to ennoble it.

I am told that he passes much more of his time in drinkin2; than in working: I blame him less than I pity him. Here, every thing is good if it only tend to impart a glow : wine is the sun of Russia. If to the misery of being a Russian is added the circumstance of being a painter, the individual ought to expatriate himself. Must not the land, where there is night for three months of the year, and where the snow sheds brighter radiance than the sun, be a land of exile to the painter ?

By endeavouring to reproduce the singularities of nature under these latitudes, a few character-painters may win for themselves the honour of a place on the steps of the temple of arts ; but an historical painter ought to fly this climate. Peter the Great laboured in vain; nature will always place bounds to the fancies of men, were they justified by the ukases of twenty czars.

I have seen one work of M. Brulow's which is truly о 2