Studio: international art (11.1897)

Marc Antocolsky

dramatic power made a
deep impression upon us.
There was not a man
among us who did not
spend his last kopek on a
photograph, no matter how
small, on which he gazed
far into the night, com-
municating his impressions
to the others the next
morning with the eagerness
of youth. Without exag-
geration it was a revelation
to us. Some time after-
wards a collection of paint-
ings by the French masters
of the day were presented
to the Academy by a well-
known art - patron ; the
room in which they were
exhibited became our
meeting place. It was
only then we could look
upon the originals of the
works we had worshipped
in the poorest of repro-
ductions."

At about this time young
Antocolsky was seized with
the wish of immortalising
Ivan the Terrible, that
colossal figure in Russian
history that appeals even
more strongly to the Rus-
sian than Peter the Great,

spinoza by marc antocolsky notwithstanding the dia-

bolical nature of the indi-

imagined that Antocolsky's most ardent wishes were vidual. He hit upon the ingenious plan of an
gratified now that he was permitted to work at the exhibition at twenty kopeks (five pence) entrance
Academy; but, unfortunately, tuition in those days fee, and exhibited the plaster cast of his Ivan, trie
at the Art-school in St. Petersburg was not what it work that eventually was to make him celebrated,
is at present. But the word exhibition to the Russians evidently

Antocolsky was not long in discovering this, and expressed more than the simple figure shown to
he relates it in his simple, unaffected style. " When them, as I have heard from eye-witnesses that the
I was in St. Petersburg," he says, "we students chef cTceuvre that was to attract all intellectual and
only knew of Winckelman, Flaxman, Overbeck; artistic Russia, was scarcely noticed when the
we were enthusiastic over Kaulbach, we admired sightseers discovered but one figure in the ex-
Knaus and Vautier. As to French art our know- hibition. The visitors turned from it with con-
ledge was only from hearsay ; we were told it was tempt. The sculptor had, however, achieved
chic. One day we became acquainted with this chic his purpose, for he had now sufficient funds to
through engravings and photographs. Great heavens, allow him to carry out his project. Antocolsky
what a discovery ! We went mad over those photo- studied the various phases in the life of this
graphs. We bowed down before Gerome and prince, who, at his coronation in 1547 assumed
Meissonier, and especially before Delaroche whose the title of Czar, which has since become the pro-
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