晚钟

Levitan painted this in 1892, a hard year for him. As a Jew he was expelled from Moscow that autumn under the restrictions of the time and had to finish work like this from outside the city. What he chose to paint is the opposite of upheaval. A small monastery sits in a bend of a river at dusk, its white walls and gold cupolas catching the last warm light, and the water carries their reflection straight toward you. The title names a sound, the slow toll of bells across evening water, and the whole picture is arranged to make you almost hear it. He had circled this motif before in an earlier canvas called Quiet Abode, built from monasteries he had seen near the Volga. Levitan is often called the painter of the mood landscape, and here the mood is a kind of settled calm he could not find in his own life. The little ferry crossing in the foreground is the one thing that moves, carrying figures toward the far bank and the bells.