Alyonushka

Vasnetsov began this in 1880 at Abramtsevo, the country estate outside Moscow where the railway magnate Savva Mamontov gathered artists to work from Russian folklore. The subject comes from an old fairy tale about a sister searching for her lost brother, but Vasnetsov said the picture really started when he met an ordinary peasant girl whose sorrowful look stayed with him. He set her by a dark, still pond, barefoot, her chin on her knees, ringed by thin aspens under a grey autumn sky. There is nothing magical on the canvas, no witch and no talking animals, only a Russian landscape carrying the mood of the tale. When it first appeared at the travelling exhibition of the Peredvizhniki painters, critics were cool, and its fame came later.