Ukrainische Nacht

When Kuindzhi showed this in 1876 people stood in front of it convinced the moonlight was somehow lit from behind. White huts of a steppe village glow against a deep blue-black sky, tall poplars stand like dark spikes, and the whole thing trades story for pure sensation, the feel of a warm southern night. It marked the moment Kuindzhi broke from the careful academic manner of his earlier work and went after light itself. One nice detail from the time, an astronomer who saw it remarked that Kuindzhi had actually placed the stars in their correct constellations, not scattered at random the way most painters did. Two years later it hung at the Paris world's fair.