Alley. Beginning 1880 Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900)

Description of Isaac Levitan’s painting "The Alley"

This painting among Isaak Levitan’s canvases is not the most famous. But in it, too, this true singer of Russian nature showed the beauty of a summer day. The trees in the picture have their crowns intertwined, and the lacy shadow of their leaves falls on the yellow dirt track. The same yellowness is visible on the trunks, only in the distance, at the end of this nature-created tunnel, you can clearly see the blue sky.

From one edge of the path, the trunks seem to stand right up against each other. Apparently noticing this effect, the artist rushed to transfer it to the canvas. If you look closely, it becomes clear that the trees simply grow in several rows.

This is probably a park, once planted by people. While the trees were thin, they didn’t seem to be planted very densely, but over the years the trunks have gained their power, and now stand like a formation of Roman legionnaires.

The alley goes off into the distance, and from the beginning you wouldn’t even see a single person in the picture. There is, however, someone there in the background. You can see the figure of a man walking as if toward the viewer. But it is quite difficult to see him in detail.

The man is not pacing on the road itself, he is walking on the grass under the trees. Either he is hiding from the heat in the shade, or walking on the grass itself gives him more pleasure. Or maybe he just stopped to take a break and doesn’t want to hinder the movement of others. But no one can be seen walking toward him. Yes, and his figure merges with the trunks.

This gives the picture mystery, and when you are distracted by the man, you forget the thin acacia tree, which stands out from the general plan of the age-old trees with its darker foliage. There used to be a lot of such parks, there are even now in Moscow and Moscow suburbs. But not everyone is able to see the beauty of the most ordinary alley, illuminated by the sun. Only a great artist knows how to convey this beauty so that attention is drawn to it.