The Russian painter, theater artist and writer Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin, a student of ‘the Wanderers’ Valentin Serov and Vasily Polenov, became the founder of the direction of Russian impressionism and remained faithful to him all his life. Not having yet been to Paris, not having seen the paintings of Monet, Sisley, Renoir and Pissarro,

Konstantin Korovin could masterfully sketch a small sketch for a couple of hours of work in the open air. Brushstrokes in his paintings form a colorful whirlwind, in which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish outlines.

Trying to work more and more with pure bright colors, to fill his canvases with light and air, Konstantin Korovin turns to the landscapes of the southern Crimea, where he first arrived, like in Paris, with Savva Mamontov. He paints Yalta, Sevastopol, Alupka and most of all Gurzuf, where he lived at his country house for a long time in the 1910s. The study ‘In the South’ of 1906 belongs to the early period of these works. The artist was able to convey the immediacy of his enthusiasm with southern color: the light seemed to melt the contours of objects, the pier with boats, roofs of houses and an island of greenery was barely distinguishable, the mountains melt in a haze, passing into the sky.

Konstantin Korovin became one of the first Russian motorists. He loved to race around the Crimea in a car; from time to time, he stopped, took out an easel, quickly sketched and went on. 

There was no place for the first Russian impressionist in Soviets, and in 1922 he left for Paris, where his other talent, literary, was revealed. He dictated memoirs, published letters, stories, and memoirs and desperately missed Russia, where he couldn’t return.