By the Pool | |
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Artist | Isaac Levitan |
Year | 1892 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 150 cm × 209 cm (59 in × 82 in) |
Location | Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow |
By the Pool is a landscape by the Russian artist Isaac Levitan (1860–1900), completed in 1892. It is kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (inventory 1484). The size is 150×209 cm[1] (according to other sources 151.5×212 cm).[2] The foreground of the canvas shows small bridges leading into the timbers of a dam, with a pond to the right. On the other side of the river, a narrow path leads past coastal bushes into a dark twilight forest.[3][4]
Levitan began to work on the picture in 1891 in the Tver province, using as a model the natural landscape near the Tma River near the village of Bernovo. In the winter of 1891/1892 he continued to work on the painting in Moscow, and in February 1892 it was presented at the 20th Exhibition of the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions ("Peredvizhniki"), which opened in St. Petersburg. Directly from the exhibition canvas was bought from the author by Pavel Tretyakov, in agreement with whom Levitan later finalized the image of the water surface, using sketches written by him in the summer of 1892 in the Vladimir province.[5][6]
The painting By the Pool is one of the three greatest works of the artist — together with the paintings Over Eternal Peace (1894) and Lake (1899–1900)[7][8] Together with two other works from the first half of the 1890s —Over Eternal Peace and Vladimirka (1892)— By the Pool is sometimes grouped into the so-called "dark" or "dramatic" trilogy of Levitan.[9][10]
Art historian Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov considered the work By the Pool to be "the first experience on the way of creating a national image in the landscape",[11][12] and called it "one of the outstanding canvases of itinerant landscape painting", at the same time noting that this painting "is not an undisputed success" Levitan.[13] The art historian Grigory Sternin wrote that the size of the canvas and "a somewhat dramatized characteristic of the object and color environment" indicate that one of the author's goals was "to create an epic spectacle, not devoid of elements of fairy-tale theatricality".[14]