In the Country
Konstantin Korovin·1895
Historical Context
In the Country, painted in 1895 and held in the Tretyakov Gallery, represents Korovin's engagement with the Russian dacha culture of the 1890s — the educated urban class's retreat to countryside estates during summer months. The subject of garden and outdoor leisure was central to Russian Impressionism in ways that parallel French Impressionism's interest in bourgeois recreation. Korovin spent summers at the Abramtsevo estate of Savva Mamontov during the 1880s and 1890s, and the informal plein-air canvases he produced there established the template for his outdoor figure painting. This work participates in a tradition of paintings that documented the particular quality of summer light at Russian country estates — the dappled light through lime tree alleys, the whiteness of tablecloths on outdoor tables, the casual social arrangements of dacha life. The Tretyakov's holding reflects its comprehensive collection of Russian Impressionist-period work.
Technical Analysis
The painting's light is the typical high summer diffuse light of the Russian countryside — bright, slightly overcast, reflecting off light-colored surfaces. Korovin uses a higher key than many of his contemporaries, with the whites of outdoor furniture and clothing serving as bright anchors in the composition. The brushwork is free and spontaneous in the surrounding vegetation, more controlled in the figures.
Look Closer
- ◆The high-key palette, with white linens and summer light reflecting off pale surfaces, is characteristic of Korovin's dacha paintings of the 1890s.
- ◆The casual, unstaged arrangement of figures captures the informal leisure culture of the Russian educated class's summer life.
- ◆The freer, more spontaneous brushwork in the foliage contrasts with the relatively firmer handling of the human figures.
- ◆The outdoor summer light — bright, slightly diffused, without sharp shadows — creates the specific atmospheric quality Korovin pursued in his plein-air work.
