A view of the surroundings of Vilno

Painted in 1876, this view of the surroundings of Vilno (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania) documents Orlovsky working outside his most familiar Ukrainian territory, turning his attention to the wooded hills and river valleys of the northwestern Russian Empire. Vilno in 1876 was a significant city within the Empire, its mixed Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish, and Russian population and its romantic landscape of forested hills long celebrated by Polish Romantic literature. For a Russian academic landscape painter to depict this contested terrain was itself a notable choice, reflecting the expanding geographic range of Russian plein-air painters as they sought fresh subjects beyond the Ukrainian steppe and Volga River. The painting shows Orlovsky adapting his observational methods to a hillier, more densely wooded terrain than the expansive flat landscapes of Ukraine with which he was most closely associated. It stands as evidence of the mobility of academically trained Russian artists in the second half of the nineteenth century, moving across vast imperial territories in search of landscape subjects.

The 1876 canvas shows a shift toward more complex spatial organisation to accommodate hilly terrain, with the composition likely structured around layered planes of wooded slopes. Greens are more varied and cooler than in the Ukrainian steppe paintings, reflecting the denser northern forest environment. Academic recession techniques organise the depth effectively.