By the Pool

By the Pool, painted in 1892, belongs to a cluster of works Levitan produced during his sustained engagement with the quiet, slightly melancholic landscapes of central Russia — ponds, mill streams, and overgrown waterways where stillness felt loaded with memory. The pool in question is likely associated with one of the estates where Levitan spent working summers, and it carries the particular atmosphere of enclosed water half-hidden under willows and alders. His study of reflections intensified during this period, drawn to the way still water doubles the visible world while subtly distorting it. The Tretyakov Gallery holds this work, and it is often grouped with Evening Bells and A Quiet Monastery as examples of Levitan's mature mood landscapes — works where the specific topographic detail matters less than the accumulated feeling of a Russian summer afternoon. Critics of the period praised the painting's meditative quality while noting how the dense foliage threatens to close the composition entirely.

Levitan handled the dense foliage with varied impasto, the darkest shadows built up in thick strokes of near-black green while lighter areas are more thinly applied. The pool surface is the compositional key: cool silvery-grey passages reflect the sky, while darker zones mirror the overhanging vegetation. A narrow strip of bright sky at the canvas edge provides the essential tonal relief for the otherwise enclosed scene.