Society of Modem Art

Another pupil of Veshin, and a member of the Society of Modem Art, is Nicola Petroff, one of the best Bulgarian watercolour painters. He has studied nature very closely, and generally succeeds in rendering the essential parts of his subject by simple yet suggestive means. His pictures are of village streets, clusters of trees, huts reflected in water, the banks of the Danube in the neighbourhood of Widdin, some village fountain with a girl drawing water, country lanes—all distinguished by the same delicate and sure touch.

While Mihoff and Petroff are nearly always successful in adapting their methods to the subjects treated, Peter

Morozoff, another graduate of the Sofia School of Painting (pupil of Markvitchka), stands as an example of the difficulties which often beset an artist in his endeavours to ma terialise his conceptions. In his earlier productions, which were exhibited in 1905, Morozoff appears as a symbolist to whom nature and her various manifestations are but a reflection of the artist’s moods and aspirations. His most daring attempt in this line is the picture “The Nymphs’ Hidingplace,” in which, as also in some of his other compositions, Morozoff betrays the temperament of a poet rather than that of a plastic artist. The difficulties inherent to the form of art which first attracted Morozoff were, in his case, further enhanced by a conventional and not always sure technique. The moderate success which attended these early efforts soon decided Morozoff to abandon his symbolical conceptions of nature and to return to ordinary natural scenery—a revolution the more to be approved as many of his pictures betrayed an insufficient acquaintance with natural forms. In his recent landscapes nature, in the various seasons of the year, autumn by preference, appears pervaded by a symbolical meaning which gives her a character of unity. It must, however, be admitted that Morozoff does not always succeed in catching the essential elements of the scenery, neither is he free from a weakness for cheap effects. But if this detracts from the artistic merit of his pictures, it has proved an easy way of winning public approval and securing a profitable market for them. A stay of some months in Paris seems to have opened to Morozoff new vistas, and he has now taken to portraiture with the same enthusiasm which distinguished his former undertakings.

Among the remaining landscape painters—graduates of the Sofia School of Painting—Marin Georgieff is a pupil of Markvitchka, whose conventional style he seems to have contracted He has met with considerable success in his pictures of church ruins, ancient fortifications, interiors of old underground churches, and his copies of ancient Bulgarian frescoes. Christo Kabaktchieff, who has never been outside Bulgaria, belongs to the school of neoimpressionists, and sees nothing but colour in nature.

Land scape painters

Of the land scape painters who have studied abroad, Hara lampy Kieff paints chiefly grand scenery, and Kazandjieff fields and peasants. The youngest member of this class is Alexander Montafoff, who is also the most promising. Montafoff rarely indulges in bright and cheerful subjects, his pictures in most cases proceeding from a melancholy inspiration. In his work he has been influenced in turn by Bdcklin, Graf von Kalkreuth, Max Liebermann, and Segantini. These foreign influences, however, do not in the least detract from the merits of his landscapes. They were of passing character, and with his return to Bulgaria his artistic individuality has shaken them off, so that in his pictures which figured at the second Southern Slav Art Exhibition he appears as an independent artist, both as regards subject and technique.