В лодке

Korovin painted this in the summer of 1888, at a country dacha at Zhukovka on the Klyazma river near Moscow, where a circle of young artists gathered around the painter Vasily Polenov. The two figures in the rowing boat are not hired models. One is Korovin himself, the other the painter Maria Yakunchikova, both part of that summer set. He works quickly and loosely, catching the flicker of light on the water and the white of a dress, more taken with a passing bright moment than with a tidy finished scene. This kind of open-air freshness was still new in Russian painting, and Korovin was among the first to push it. Polenov had drawn him into the Abramtsevo circle, the group of artists gathered around the railway magnate Savva Mamontov.