activity by making their art 'useful' to society. They repudiated the philosophy of 'art for art's sake'
which they identified with the current academic tradition. Centred in the Petersburg Academy,
this tradition derived its standards mainly from international neo-classicism, tempered by the
introduction of German romanticism (for example, the Nazarenes) in the 1820's. The 'Wanderers'
defied this tradition, saying that art should be primarily concerned with, and subordinate to, reality.
'The true function of art is to explain life and comment on it'; 'Reality is more beautiful than its
representation in art.' Such were the dogmas proclaimed by Chernishevsky, ¹ the aesthetic propa-
gandist of the 1860's in Russia, who together with Dobroliubov and Nekrassov had a great
influence among these artists, and were in large part the spiritual directors of this nationalist
movement in the arts.

The 'Wanderers' interpreted the current idea that art should be an active force in the cause of
social reform by laying an emphasis on the subject-matter of their works. 'Only the content is
able to refute the accusation that art is an empty diversion . . .' proclaimed Chernishevsky, and
they therefore sought, in at first an only too literal and literary fashion, to depict the peasant as
the new hero, and his innocence and the austerity of his life as the all-important theme. This
mission of the 'Wanderers' to arouse compassion and sympathy for the common man was an
unprecedented subject for art in Russia, not only by virtue of its 'social' impulse, but by its
emphasis on the traditional Russian way of life, for since Peter the Great's europeanization of the
country, everything Russian had been dismissed as barbarous and boorish, and 'culture' had
come to mean something essentially foreign.

The 'Wanderers' were not themselves directly involved with the Slavophile movement which
rejected the Western culture and economic pattern which Peter the Great had introduced into
Russia, but many of the following generation of artists turned away from the West and sought
to create a new national culture which would be based on the Russian peasant and the long-
neglected national artistic traditions. The Slavophiles felt that Russia's was a peculiar destiny
which would pursue an historical pattern of development radically different from that of the
West; a destiny inspired by the mission of Orthodox Christianity to the West, in which Moscow
and the former glory of Muscovy would supplant the present sovereignty of Petersburg and all
that she stood for. It was this turning to Moscow which is significant in art.

For Moscow became the centre of this nationalist movement which lies at the base of the modern
movement in Russian art. The repudiation of international neo-classicism which had dominated
the Russian artistic field since the end of the eighteenth century, and the ensuing rediscovery
of the national artistic heritage, was the starting-point of a modern school of painting in
Russia.

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