Last Rays 1903

Konstantin Bogaevsky made this landscape painting, “Last Rays” using oil paint in a style that feels, to me, like he’s really thinking through the possibilities of the medium. Look at the way he uses color here, not to copy reality, but to create an emotional space. The sky isn’t just blue, it’s a swirl of blues and whites that pull your eye across the canvas. The paint is applied with short strokes, almost like he’s knitting the scene together. It’s not about being precise, but about capturing a feeling, a sense of vastness and light. See those rocks in the foreground? They’re not just grey, they're daubs of blues, yellows, greens and browns. Up close you can see the physicality of the paint; the way it catches the light makes you wanna reach out and touch it. I wonder if he was thinking about painters like Monet or even Van Gogh, artists who weren’t afraid to get messy and let their feelings guide their brush. Like them, this piece feels to me like a window into the artist's soul rather than a simple transcription of the landscape.