After Peter, Russian icon painting became a secondary art form. The newly westernized upper classes began to commission artists to paint secular themes based on West-European tastes and sensibilities. Peter established a School of Art, staffed by artists from peasant backgrounds; these received formal training in portraiture rather than in icon painting. Peter's school is later made into a department in the newly formed Academy of Sciences. Finally, in 1767, Catherine II creates an independent Academy of Fine Arts.
Russians, accustomed to icons, were most inclined at first toward portrait art. The first Russian secular portraits were very much a blind imitation of Western styles. Naturalism and mannerism were emphasized in the portraits, most of which chose as subjects Russian nobles in Western garb. The best of the early portrait artists included Fyodor Rokotov (1735-1808), Dmitri Levitsky (1735-1822), Vladimir Borovikovski (1757-1825), Orest Kiprensky (1782-1836), and Vasily Tropinin (1776-1857). Only gradually did native Russian background elements and simple peasants appear in portrait art.
Thus portrait painting and, later, scenes from Greco-Roman and Biblical scenes replaced iconography in the tastes of much of the Russian nobility. Russian-style icons continued to be painted, especially for the peasantry and for country churches. The Academy of Fine Arts originally controlled the content of painting in much the same way as the subjects of icon painting had been controlled by the Church. Painting was to be either Western-style idealized or manneristic portraits of members of the nobility, or Biblical or Greco-Roman scenes painted in the style of classicism then prevalent in Europe. Notable classicists and idealists painters in the Academy tradition included Karl Briullov (1799-1852), famous for his Last Day of Pompeii, and Aleksandr Ivanov (1806-58), famous for his Christ's Appearance to the People, a monumental work(15' x 7') which he worked on for over 20 years. These two artists and many others like them lived and worked for years in Italy rather than in Russia.
In the early 1800's the Academy broadened the spectrum topics it considered acceptable. But although Russian subjects were increasingly allowed, the purpose and goal of art was strictly circumscribed, as witnessed by the following Academy directive: "Art must aim at revealing virtue, at immortalizing the deeds of the great men who deserve the nation's gratitude, and at encouraging the heart and mind to emulate them." This very much fit in with the trend of Romanticism then current in Europe. Still, relatively few scenes from Russian history and culture were painted until after 1863.
Several artist who painted in the first half of the 19th century stand out against the stifling, enforced uniformity of the Academy tradition. Aleksei Venetsianov (1799-1847), a self-trained artist of peasant origin, painted many lyrical scenes of peasants in the Russian countryside. His primitivist and nativist art was a forerunner of greater Slavophilic influence yet to come. Pavel Fedotov (1815-52) painted satyrical scenes of petty people with petty problems (much in the vein of England's Hogarth). His social realism, although directed against individuals rather than against society as a whole, are precursors to the scathing ideological realism that was to become popular in the late 1800's under Westernizer influence. Finally, Sylvester Schedrin (1791-1830) pioneered landscape painting. Although his scenes were usually Mediterranean, he nevertheless paved the way for the purely Russian landscape painters who were to follow in the second half of the 19th century.
Thus, by 1863 Russian painting was as diverse and refined as any in Europe, with hundreds of talented artists working in a variety of genres. Also, the "Russianization" of Western secular painting was well under way, with an increasing number of Russian scenes and people being depicted.The liberal use of bright color contrasts to stimulate the eye remained, a stylistic inheritance from the best days of Russian icon painting, and, ultimately, from pre-Christian times before that.