In 1881, a memorable exhibition of Verestchagin’s pictures was held in Vienna. Its success was probably without a parallel in the history of art exhibitions by a single painter. For a whole month the public poured into the rooms at an average rate of certainly not less than eight thousand a day (on the last day twenty thousand passed or tried to pass through the rooms), until, from the Emperor to his humblest subjects, the peasantry included, there was no class, and it may be added no nationality, within the Empire, which had not sent its representatives to the Künstlerhaus. An attempt, by some political papers, to make the enthusiasm of the Slavs for Verestchagin a means of exciting the hereditary jealousy between them and other races of the Empire was happily frustrated. It is literally true that the broad thoroughfare leading to the exhibition was often blocked by the immense crowd, and that the announcement, “The gallery is full to overflowing,” had to be hung out to excuse the temporary closing of the building two or three times a day. The artist did not conceal from his friends that he was proud of the popular and even of the numerical element in his success, because it showed that his work had touched those it was above all meant to reach. He had painted for the people in the highest sense, and their response showed that he had not laboured in vain. _Du reste_, this and this only was his reward, for, beyond the payment of his bare expenses, he had no pecuniary interest in the exhibition. I may now leave the painter to speak for himself in regard to his own guiding principles in art. The theory of them will be found in what he has written on Progress in Art, and on Realism. The practice, in so far as it relates to right methods of historic study for the painter, is, in all that follows relating to the Campaign of Moscow, his latest and his greatest series of works. RICHARD WHITEING. ----- Footnote 1: The cross of St. George, the highest military distinction in Russia, is not given in the usual way on a mere order of the sovereign, but only after a special inquiry into the circumstances of each case by the Council of the Order. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ON PROGRESS IN ART