Brestovets

Painted in 1878 and held in the Tretyakov Gallery, "Brestovets" dates from one of the most pivotal years of Polenov's career. Having returned from Paris and Rome in 1877 after years of European study on an Academy scholarship, Polenov brought Barbizon and Italian landscape sensibilities to Russian subject matter. The 1878 Brestovets canvas was painted during the same fertile period that produced his celebrated Moscow Courtyard (1878) — shown at that year's Wanderers exhibition to great acclaim. Brestovets is the name of a village and area in Serbia, suggesting this work may be a study made during Polenov's travels in the Balkans — he participated as a Red Cross volunteer in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, and the Balkan landscape made a deep impression. The Tretyakov holding of this work places it among the state's core documents of Russian Realist landscape painting at the point of its greatest achievement.

An 1878 Polenov canvas shows his European training at its most freshly applied. The influence of Corot and the Barbizon painters is evident in the tonal structure — closely modulated values building atmospheric depth — while the direct observation reflects the plein-air practice he had absorbed in France. The paint surface of this early period is somewhat more elaborate than his later work, with more visible reworking as the young painter negotiated between academic finish and outdoor directness.