The North

The North (1879), in the Tretyakov Gallery, was exhibited at the Wanderers' Seventh Exhibition in 1879, where it created a sensation through its treatment of the primordial northern landscape — barren, rocky, sparsely treed, with a vast sky over an immense emptiness. Kuindzhi had by this point developed his characteristic technique of tonal opposition and the near-phosphorescent rendering of light, but The North applies these qualities to a diametrically different subject from his Ukrainian moonlit nights: here the light is cold, grey, and diffuse, the time of day perhaps late afternoon or deep winter dusk. The painting engages a northern sublime that had preoccupied Russian painters since the Wanderers began their push toward national landscape subjects, and Kuindzhi's version strips it to an absolute minimum — almost nothing in the scene except rock, water, sparse trees, and sky.

The tonal structure is the reverse of his nocturnes: instead of a bright light source against darkness, The North presents a diffuse, even illumination in which light comes from everywhere and nowhere. The handling is broader and less detailed than his moonlit subjects, appropriate to the featureless northern terrain. The palette is cool and restricted — grey, pale blue, muted ochre — without the warm contrast he used in Ukrainian subjects.