One of Levitan's most famous paintings: The Lake.

Works: Lake

Year: 1899 ~ 19 Style: Realism

Theme: Landscape Painting

Type: Oil on canvas Size: 149cm? ×? 28cm

This painting is one of Levitan's representative works, his masterpiece and one of his most mature landscape paintings. Unfortunately, this is a work that can never be completed.

The picture is magnificent and vividly outlines the eternal features of Russia: the close-up view of the picture is a quiet lake, which peacefully holds the blue sky and floating clouds, and the faintly visible white church spire is reflected in the water. The crystal-like blue of the sky is the unique blue of the sky near the Arctic Ocean in high-latitude countries.

in the faint shadow of white clouds, distant and quiet farmhouses and haystacks can be seen faintly. With magnificent poetry, Levitan interprets fascinating themes: distant waters and land, clouds and wind swimming, and shadows flowing through the newly plowed land in spring. The whole picture gives people a bright, fresh and pleasant feeling.

This painting is an excellent embodiment of Levitan's ability to control colors, which seems to concentrate all the pleasing colors. Yellow, green and blue are important colors in the picture, while the color dominated by blue is extremely bright and the purity of the picture color is extremely high. The orange roof on the left bank and the reflection of the green reed in the lower right corner echo each other in the same tone, setting off the blue theme of the whole picture brilliantly.

In order to explore the color changes of the sky and the lake under different illumination and climate changes, Levitan has carefully studied different techniques, striving to show the vividness and richness of the beauty of nature. The whole picture reverberates in a musical melody, so some critics compare this painting to Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2.

Levitan put his profound thoughts and rich emotions into his landscape creation. His landscape not only shows beautiful natural features, but also endows nature with unique emotions.

He said: What we touch is the vastness and melancholy of the Russian land. Levitan's landscape painting is different from other Russian landscape painters' works, which not only preserves the unique poetry and lyricism of Russian painting, but also has the gorgeous and striking color of French Impressionism, which is rare in the history of Russian painting.