Fishes

By 1894 Korovin had spent a decade loosening his brush against the grain of Russian painting, which still mostly told careful, finished stories. That summer he traveled the cold northern coasts with his friend the painter Valentin Serov, sketching fishing stations for a railway patron. Fish, fresh off the boats, were part of what he saw and part of what he loved to paint. Here he treats a simple catch as an exercise in wet light, the brush standing in for slick skin and silver scale rather than drawing each one out. It is the kind of quick, high-keyed still life he kept returning to for the rest of his life, tables of fish and fruit painted almost as fast as they were set down.