Even while Isaac Levitan was studying at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, the qualities of the artist’s talent and aspirations, innovative for Russian painting of that time, appeared. Levitan’s teacher Mikhail Nesterov recalled that in 1879, at the student’s exhibition, Levitan’s landscape “Simonov Monastery” was perceived as a real revelation, in which the quiet calm of a summer evening on the Moscow River was perfectly conveyed. Unfortunately, the location of the corner on the Moskva River shown in the picture is unknown, but recently another work by young Levitan was discovered – “A Cloudy Day on the Moskva River”, where the Simonov Monastery is also visible in the background. Quite small, this sketch is notable for its pictorial integrity and is interesting in that it anticipates compositional solutions of some of the artist’s mature masterpieces.
Year of painting: 1877.
Dimensions of the painting: 41.5 x 73 cm.
Material: canvas.
Writing technique: oil.
Genre: landscape.
Style: realism.
Gallery: State Literary Museum, Moscow, Russia.