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The work of Viktor Borisov-Musatov stands apart from the works of other artists of the late 19th – early 20th centuries due to the attempt to create some very personal, intimate world in his paintings. His works do not describe the era – they tell about the artist’s life, sometimes completely ignoring being and historical elements, they are full of melancholy and longing for the past.
The idea of the painting “The Pond” came to Borisov-Musatov at the estate of the princes Prozorovsky-Golitsyn, where he rested in the summer of 1902. A seated woman is depicted near a small pond – this is the artist’s beloved wife, a fragile figure in a cape, standing next to him – his sister. The clouds are very clearly reflected in the water, as if frozen in the blue sky, the shadows of the same motionless trees – the whole canvas is filled with a deep ringing silence that makes a person feel both his greatness and insignificance.
Borisov-Musatov’s painting “The Pond” impressed critics, artists, and all the painter’s contemporaries very much with its inner poetry hidden behind oil strokes. A wonderful work, striking with the velvet colors, clarity of the sky, the foliage of the trees, the quiet surface of the pond. The woman in a blue dress – the artist’s wife – is the central color and compositional element of the picture: the rich, bright blue color of her dress determines the color scheme and mood of the entire work.
Year of painting: 1902.
Dimensions of the painting: 27.2 x 27.5 cm.
Material: canvas.
Writing technique: oil, tempera.
Genre: genre painting.
Style: symbolism.
Gallery: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
