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March
Isaac Levitan · Romanticism & Landscape
- Artist
- Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860–1900)
- Date
- 1895
- Dimensions
- 60 x 75 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
March shows a sunny late-winter day in the Russian countryside. A brown horse harnessed to a sledge waits by the porch of a wooden house; the snow is beginning to melt, and the bare trees and the forest behind glow in the warm spring light.
A closer look
There are no people, yet the scene is full of life: the snow is pale yellow where the sun strikes it and blue in the shadows, water drips from the roof, and the sky is a clear, deep blue. Levitan painted it at an estate in Tver province where he was staying in early spring, working quickly outdoors to catch the light. His brushwork here is freer and brighter than in his earlier, more melancholy landscapes, close to the Impressionists. The picture captures the joyful moment when winter is about to give way to spring.
More by Isaac Levitan
In this gallery
Famous works elsewhere
- A Quiet Monastery 1890
- Golden Autumn 1895
- Lake. Russia 1899
- Evening Bells 1892
- The Vladimirka 1892
- Spring. High water 1897