Description of the picture:
Moonlit night – Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy. 1880. Oil on canvas. 178.8×215; 135.2 cm
How many colors can a night carry? Lots of – proves through the centuries to Kramskoy spectators. The painting “Moonlit Night” is one of the most delightful lyrical “evening” paintings of the great Russian painter.
In the bright moonlight illuminating the wide wooden bench in the park, we see a young woman dressed in a luxurious white dress. Everything around is plunged into darkness, but the moon here and there highlights fragments of the park, and you can already see the calm expanse of water with water lilies, a winding alley of the park with tall mighty trees.
The main character of the canvas is a mysterious pensive woman, Kramskoy wrote from nature. At the first stage of creating the canvas, Anna Popova (the future wife of the great chemist Mendeleev) became a model, and the artist finished the painting with another model – Elena Tretyakova.
The painting also did not find its name immediately, the author considered the options of “Magic Night”, “Old Poplars”, but at the first exhibitions under the canvas was a laconic inscription “Night”.
The finished painting was acquired by the husband of the second model – philanthropist and collector Sergei Tretyakov, the younger brother of the more famous Pavel Tretyakov. All his life the delightful “Moonlit Night” was at his place, and after death, according to the will of the owner, was transferred to the Tretyakov Gallery."