The Mermaids

The Mermaids, painted in 1871, represents Kramskoi's engagement with Russian folkloric and literary imagination at a moment when nationalist cultural themes were increasingly important to the Peredvizhniki movement. Based on Nikolai Gogol's story "A May Night," the painting depicts rusalki — Slavic water spirits or mermaids — gathered in a moonlit garden in the still hours before dawn. Kramskoi approached the supernatural subject naturalistically rather than decoratively: the rusalki appear as pale, slightly unreal female figures moving through silvery moonlight and shadow, their presence disturbing rather than enchanting. The painting explores the atmosphere of Gogol's text — its mixture of folk magic, melancholy, and erotic unease — through careful attention to nocturnal light effects and the quality of collective female presence. It was shown at an early Peredvizhniki exhibition and demonstrated that the movement's realist programme could accommodate imaginative and literary subjects alongside social documentation.

The nocturnal setting gives Kramskoi an opportunity to explore pale moonlight effects against dark landscape, creating an atmosphere of unreality within a naturalistic framework. Figures are rendered with a slightly luminous quality against the shadowed garden. The tonal range is narrow and cool, dominated by blues, silver-greys, and diffuse white.