Pond 1910

Konstantin Alexeevich Korovin made this landscape oil painting, called Pond, with earthy greens and browns and flicks of light across the surface. I bet Korovin stood right there by the edge of the pond, squinting to capture the reflection of the trees in the water and the way the light filtered through the leaves, dabbing and swirling and building up the texture of the paint. I imagine him squinting in the bright sunlight, the smell of damp earth filling his nostrils. There’s a sort of shorthand at work – look at how he’s rendered the foliage with just a few strokes of the brush, trusting that our eyes will fill in the details. In the lower right, the brush marks are more intense – that little patch of warmth and color is pure delight. It's like a conversation between the artist and the landscape, each responding to the other, in a dance of gesture and feeling, each informing the other.