Vento fresco. Il Volga

Levitan is remembered for quiet, melancholy Russian landscapes, grey rivers and bare autumn trees. This one is different. He worked at it on and off for about four years, finishing in 1895, and filled it with a brisk, sunlit wind blowing off the Volga. Steamers move upriver, a small tugboat hauls two heavy barges behind it, and the water breaks into sharp blue and white under a fast-moving sky. Everything is in motion. Levitan painted it while his heart was already failing, and he had bright, buoyant days like this one between long spells of gloom and illness. He died five years later, not yet 40.