The exhibition of the Sevastopol Art Museum named after Mikhail Pavlovich Kroshitsky houses a small landscape named “Pond” by the famous Russian artist Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (1844–1927).

The painting was created in the small town of Veules in Normandy, northern France, where Polenov painted a lot of excellent studies. This one, so calm, softly but accurately drawn, painted en plein air, retains the living impression of nature, but is perceived as a complete, independent work — as a painting in its own right. Curiously enough, this place was, most likely, “given” to the young artist by a senior comrade of his — Alexey Petrovich Bogolyubov. The State Tretyakov Gallery houses his landscape “Forest in Veules. Normandy” made three years earlier — in 1871, which depicts the same picturesque corner of nature.

Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov is widely known for his historical and genre paintings, portraits. Yet, he was most of all attracted to landscape, plein air painting. In 1871, Vasily Polenov graduated from the Academy of Arts and was awarded a grand gold medal, as well as Ilya Repin. Both artists were entitled to a state-funded trip to Europe. A five-year period of traveling in Germany, Italy, and France played a huge role in the creative development of Polenov. At the time, he was not yet fully developed as an artist, had not chosen his line of interest and was therefore more open to foreign influences, continued to learn not only from the old masters, visiting galleries, museums, and private collections, but also modern painters, with whose works he became familiarized at numerous exhibitions. Studying the works of remarkable French landscape painters, and above all the Barbizonians, the artist learned directly, rather than through academic schemes, to look at nature and understand it, to comprehend its great harmony. Vasily Polenov’s stay in Paris coincided with the time of the first exhibitions of the Impressionists. Though their works had no decisive effect on the artist’s style, they acted as an additional impetus to his mastery of plein air painting.