Fish 1916

Konstantin Alexeevich Korovin made this still life painting of fish with brushes and oil paint and a really good eye. I can imagine the artist laying out the fish, the basket, and a dark bottle, thinking about how to arrange them. There’s a certain dark drama to the scene, a sense of weight and texture coming from the thick daubs of paint. It's like Korovin is building the image right there on the canvas. I wonder if he took a break to eat that fish? Look at the way the brushstrokes capture the glimmer of the fish scales, those short flicks of white and silver. I love how he’s not trying to copy reality exactly, but rather capture the feeling of the fish, cold and slippery. I think of Manet and the other impressionists here, all those artists who were not just painting what they saw but how they experienced the world around them. It's like they're saying: "Hey, let's talk about what painting *can* do, how it can make us feel."