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Moonlit Night on the Dnieper
Arkhip Kuindzhi · Romanticism & Landscape
- Artist
- Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi (1842–1910)
- Date
- 1880
- Dimensions
- 105 x 144 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Moonlit Night on the Dnieper shows the wide Ukrainian river at night, with a full moon breaking through dark clouds and casting a brilliant, greenish path of light across the water, while a village lies sleeping on the high bank.
A closer look
The luminous moonlight on the river seems to glow from within the canvas, an effect so startling that viewers looked behind the painting to search for a hidden lamp. Kuindzhi achieved it by carefully contrasting warm and cold colours and by using new pigments. When the painting was shown in 1880, it was exhibited alone in a darkened room lit by a single lamp, and crowds queued for hours to see it. It was one of the first one-painting exhibitions in Russia.
More by Arkhip Kuindzhi
Famous works elsewhere
- Ukrainian Night 1876
- Evening in Ukraine 1878
- A Birch Grove 1879
- Red Sunset on the Dnieper 1900
- Lake Ladoga 1873
- The North 1879