Description of the picture:
Pond – Victor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov. 1902-1903. Canvas, oil. 177×216
Painting “Pond” Zubrilovka was created in the park of the estate of Princess Prozorova-Golitsyna at the happiest time for the artist: Elena Vladimirovna Alexandrova agreed to become his wife. The artist posed for his sister, Elena Borisova-Musatova, and the bride, who embodied the images of the Eternal Femininity.
Despite the fact that the painting was written from nature – the actual existing park with a reservoir and real women, everyone saw in it something not of this world. The mysterious semi-reality and timelessness of the painting became the most poetic manifestation of the symbolist vision of the dream world. The reservoir, whose outlines in reality was an ideal circle, the artist depicts in the form of a large oval extending with its edges beyond the canvas. This geometric shape, so beloved by Musatov, is echoed by a similar, but smaller, skirt of one of the heroines, laid in a beautiful oval. Their combination immediately sets a certain musical rhythm for the entire work. The peculiar construction of the composition – the exclusion of the horizon from the picture – an important technique. Using it, the painter deliberately brings together the first and second plans, making the canvas more flat.
The heroines, located in the foreground, are located below the pond, and the water surface itself, serene and clear, like the sky, literally hangs over them. As a result, the illusion of a real mirror is created, raised and placed vertically. A completely different image is born out of the ordinary landscape, a new reality – which was very characteristic of symbolist artists."