Nikolay Nikanorovich Dubovskoy made a significant contribution to the development of Russian Realist landscape painting in the second half of the 19th century. The heyday of his career happened over the last two decades of the 19th century and coincided with the general direction that Russian art was taking at that time. As a member of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions, Dubovskoy shared the democratic ideas and views of his colleagues and created works of art filled with socially significant content.

Dubovskoy’s pictorial manner was based on the traditions of academic painting. His teacher Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt instilled in him a rational attitude to nature, which implied contemplating the laws of its development and taking an analytical approach to its study. Most of Dubovsky’s works are characterized by a certain interpretation of nature, which combines the artist’s epic worldview with a lyrical perception.

Dubovskoy used a variety of subjects, motifs and themes in his works, and he had some favorite ones. They include the wide and epic view of the sea and the sky. The artist brought this landscape motif to the level of a majestic spectacle. His tendency to generalize the landscape image can be found not only in large paintings but also in numerous preparatory studies.

The study called “The Seashore”, painted at the end of the 19th century, depicts a subject that is typical of the artist’s works — the sea and the sky. It shows a narrow piece of the seashore. The artist used broad and sweeping brush strokes and a restrained color palette of gray and blue. The study conveys a vivid, generalized impression of nature, genuine and majestic in its pristine beauty.