Moscow courtyard

Polenov painted this from a rented room near the Arbat in Moscow in the summer of 1878. He was newly back from years in Europe and unsure of himself, and he sent the canvas to the traveling exhibition almost as an afterthought — his first showing with the Peredvizhniki, the society of painters who had broken from the academy to paint Russian life plainly. What he showed was a corner of ordinary Moscow: a churchyard, washing on a line, children and chickens in the weeds, the domes of a church rising over low rooftops in a summer morning light. Pavel Tretyakov bought it straight off the wall. It hangs in his gallery in Moscow to this day.