Der See. Russland

Levitan was working on this big, bright lake when he died, and he never finished it. He had a weak heart, made worse by a cold he caught that winter, and in the summer of 1900 he was gone at 39. Friends found this canvas in his studio along with about 40 other unfinished paintings. It is the sunniest thing he ever attempted, a wide lake under a windy sky with white clouds and their reflections and a far shore dotted with churches and villages. After years of painting quiet, melancholy Russian landscapes, he seems to have wanted one last picture that was pure light and air. When it was first shown, at the memorial exhibition the year after his death, it hung under a different name, Sunny Day.