Picture “Quiet Abode”, Isaac Levitan, 1890 
- Posted by Isaac Ilyich Levitan
- Museum: Tretyakov Gallery
- Year: 1890
Overview of the painting :
A quiet abode is Levitan. 1890. Oil on canvas. 87.5×108
This masterpiece of the Russian church landscape was created by the artist shortly after his first foreign trip. At the first glance at the picture, the viewer feels that the author seems to be bored in his native expanses, with such strength, love and tenderness he recreates the Volga monastery on the canvas.
The monastery is fenced off from the world by the Volga, only thin and shaky bridges connect it with the bustle and troubles of the secular world. In the pinkish rays of the rising sun, when nothing violates the silence around, the monastery drowning in green looks especially solemn and calm.
Light, shy clouds in the morning sky rush to make way to the light after a short summer night. Reflection of the monastery in slow and lazy river water creates a special rhythm of work, allows the viewer to return to the details of the masterpiece again and again and adjusts the magnificent Russian landscape to the calm contemplation.
Sewed bridges end with the shore on which someone carefully built a sand staircase. A trampled path is visible next to the stairs. This landscape detail takes on symbolic meaning. Everyone can choose their own path to the temple. The author seems to be trying to say that the road to God can be different, and the ultimate goal appears only after long and devastating searches and mistakes.
In addition, the rising sun has already illuminated the monastery church, while the opposite coast is still dusk in power. And the reflection of the monastery in Volga water can be a symbol of a mirage – those temptations and false virtues that turn a person away from God’s world, complete peace, peace and spiritual purity.
The picture is rich in halftone. The master managed to see dozens of the most subtle, subtle, subtle shades of shades in the timid and muffled light of sunrise. All this makes the work very close to everyone, gives rise to warm and bright feelings.