According to Semyon Vengerov, Grigorovich's first two novels marked the peak of his whole career. "All of his later books were written with the same sympathy for the common man, but failed to excite," this literary historian argued. Some critics belonging to the Russian left (Vengerov included) made much of the fact that Grigorovich (as well as Turgenev) allegedly 'hated' Chernyshevsky; others considered his works deficient, for being not radical enough. Critics from all camps, though, admired Grigorovich for his fine, simple, yet colourful language and praised him as a master of 'natural landscape'. This gift, developed apparently as a result of his love for fine arts and painting, was quite extraordinary for someone who'd been brought up by two French women and up until the age of eight spoke hardly any Russian at all.