Берёзовая роща

Levitan started this small canvas in 1885, during summers he spent at Babkino, a country estate outside Moscow where he lived close to the young writer Anton Chekhov and his family. The two were friends, and it shows in the mood, unguarded and intimate rather than grand. He could not finish it there. It took him four years and a move to Plyos, a quiet town on the Volga, before he found the exact light he wanted, sun broken up by birch trunks and scattered across young grass. There is no story in it, no event, just a patch of woodland at the moment the low sun turns the leaves half gold. Russian writers still reach for the word impressionist, though his greens are softer and damper than anything coming out of Paris.