Alexander Kiselyov was a member of the Peredvizhniki (Itinerants) Society and one of the most prominent Russian landscape artists of the 19th century. He painted the Mountains in clouds study in 1891 during his trip in the Caucasus. The scene in the picture has just had a rain, the clearing in the middle of a valley enjoy the first sun beams, and the mountain ridge is nearly veiled in curly thunderstorm clouds. The painting is dynamic, the artist dabbed small and embossed brush strokes on top of a thick and broad background.

Like many other Russian artists of the 19th century, Kiselyov didn’t get an art degree at once. He started off as a cadet of a military school but never completed the course. Later, he entered St. Petersburg University, and only after that did he become a student of the Academy of Arts and graduated from it in 1865. He then moved to Kharkov and got the job of a secretary at the Land Bank. He devoted all of his free time to painting — he began to work as a drawing teacher, painted the local countryside, and studied Russian icon painting.

A critically important event occurred in Kiselyov’s life as a painter in 1875 when he sent his View of Kharkov environs to the Itinerants’ Society. The picture was accepted for an exhibition, and a year later Kiselyov was elected a full member of the Society. Shortly afterwards, he moved to Moscow and made a brilliant career as a painter. The buyers of his works included Pavel Tretyakov, an art patron and collector, the Empress Maria, and the Crown Prince Nicholas II. For some time, Alexander Kiselyov was head of the Art Department of an illustrated magazine, Artist, and was elected a member of the Art Academy in the late 1890’s.

Apart from the famous series of Caucasian landscapes, Kiselyov painted numerous views of the Ukrainian and Central Russian countryside. In An abandoned mill (1891), he employed a romantic subject: a solitary human figure is set against the background of a quiet summer landscape with a calm river and a sagging structure.